Interest based content distribution

ABSTRACT

The disclosed embodiments relate to systems and methods for efficiently distributing content among a plurality of users which may be used to implement a social networking service. Content items, which may include “posts” submitted by one user, e.g. responsive to a “post” submitted by another user, are stored in association with data indicative of a specified subset of an interest category classifications defined by the system. Users of the system further specify a subset of the interest category classifications to define their interests. The system then provides content items of interest to the user by mapping, as will be described, the defined interests of the user against the interests associated with the stored content items. The disclosed embodiments enable users to discover and expand their interconnections with other users which may have similar interests.

BACKGROUND

Internet communications applications such as, for example, e-mail,instant-messaging, telephony (voice over IP, or VoIP), or e-commercerequire users to exchange contact information prior to initiatingcommunication between one or more users. Exceptions to this includecommunity-based or topic-oriented applications, such as newsgroups, chatboards, membership websites, or hobby websites, where communicationamong users may be controlled by the particular application. On theInternet, users who do not know one another, but who may have reason tocommunicate, may be limited by two main factors: 1) the availability ofcontact information for those with whom they wish to communicate; and 2)the capabilities of an application (e.g., a website), such as whetherthe provider permits communication among users utilizing theapplication. For example, users visiting the same web page may have atleast a common interest in the content of that page, yet they normallyhave no way of discovering this, nor do they have means forcommunicating with other users. To identify and/or communicate withusers having similar interests, a user must know such persons in advanceor rely on a facility provided by the application (i.e., the website).

While users may share links or start a conversation through emails,email is not an optimal mechanism for such activities. Instead, socialnetworks may change the way users communicate with one another byproviding a better mechanism for users to easily share information andengage in a conversation with other users.

A Social Network may refer to a community of members, participants,users or other individuals that share similar values or interests. Eachmember is typically associated with a personal profile, which maycontain demographics, psychographics or professional informationrelating to the user. Each member may have from zero to many connectionsor relationships with other members within the social network. Eachmember may engage in activities, such as email communications,information sharing, etc., with other members. These individuals maygrow the social network community by inviting others to join/connect totheir community. A social network may also include individuals whoengage in some common real-time activities online and share some commoncontext. This includes, but is not limit to, shopping at the same onlinee-merchant website, browsing the same or related content pages, engagingin an online event or activities at the same time. A social network mayextend to activities and individuals engaging in activities around a webpage or an object referred to by such a web page. As used herein, theterm “users” may include members, guest members, and others accessing asocial network, and the term “social” is used in broadest sense to referto communities of interest.

A social networking service is an electronic or otherwise online/networkbased service that provides a platform for, or otherwise facilitates,creating and/or building social networks and/or relationships amongpeople who share interests. Social networking services may facility oneor more social networks, i.e. non-overlapping groups of interconnectedusers. A user of a typical social network service may be able to createa profile that lists, for example, information about the user as well associal links (e.g., friends of the user). For example, the user may postideas, activities, events, interests, and contact information on theiruser profile. The user may be able to upload pictures to their profile,post blog entries, search for other users, and/or store a list ofcontacts.

The social networking service may include applications which implementforums, where the user may communicate with other users. The user may beable to create and/or subscribe to groups that share common interests oraffiliations, and the user may be able to send or receive comments andother content to or from the other group members. The social networkingservice may provide controls that allow the user to determine whichother users may view the user profile or contact the user, and to whichusers profile changes or updates are reported or pushed.

Facebook is an example of a widely used social networking service. AFacebook user creates a profile for other users to view. The user mayadd other users as friends, and these friends may be automaticallynotified when the user updates his or her profile. For example, thefriends of the user may be notified when, for example, the user uploadsnew pictures or changes his or her status to “at work.” The Facebookuser may set one or more parts of the profile to “public” (e.g., allFacebook user may view the one or more parts of the profile), and mayset parts of the profile to “private” (e.g., only friends may view theone or more parts of the profile).

Twitter is another example of a widely used social networking service. ATwitter user may send and receive text-based posts of up to 140characters, known as “tweets.” The user may subscribe to other users'tweets, and other users may subscribe to the user's tweets (e.g.,followers). Tweets are public by default, but the user may restrictmessages to be private such that only followers of the user may see thetweet. Due to the content limit (e.g., up to 140 characters), tweets maydirect followers to content-hosting services such as, for example,Twitpic to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140characters.

Social network services are, generally speaking, content aggregation anddistribution systems which aggregate content items continuously suppliedby each user, and other sources, into content storage associated withthat user, e.g. a profile web page, twitter stream, etc., andredistribute those content items, by selectively allowing access to eachuser's content storage, to selected overlapping or non-overlappingsubsets of other participants based on dynamic and/or staticpermissions, privacy settings, profile attributes, etc. set by each userwhich define what content items, or types of content, that user wishesto see of other users and/or what of their own content items or typesthey wish to allow other selected users to see. Thepermissions/settings/attributes of all of the users form a matrix ofcross-permissions which effectively defines what content items and/orusers each user “sees” or is able to discover, e.g. that user's“universe”, when they access the system. The social network systemcontinuously resolves these cross permissions as content items arereceived so as to properly redistribute, i.e. push and/or respond torequests/queries for access to, those items. As participants connect tothe system to receive updates on a an ad hoc basis, content items may bestored up and delivered in batch upon the connection/request of aparticipant. Content discovery/search must also be facilitated to allowparticipants to search/discover content items or sources/categoriesthereof, that the source thereof has suitably permissioned, and modifytheir permissions so as to obtain prior content items and/or receivedistributions of new content from those sources.

The primary feature that is common among most social network services isthe user profile. Users typically establish an account with the socialnetworking service by providing a name and other identifyinginformation, and before any action may be taken in connection with theuser profile, the user logs in to the account by supplying an accountidentifier and a password. The profile may include biographic data suchas birthday, gender, current location, schools attended, employmentexperiences, and personal relationships for searching and viewing byother users. Further information that may provide an even more detailedpicture of the profile owner and his personality may be added, such asreligious affiliation, personal philosophies, tastes in music,literature, cinema, television, athletic teams, and so on.

Links to other users or contacts may be formally established andpublicized on a user's profile as well, which may then permit directcommunications via e-mail like messages between the user and thecontacts. In some systems, real-time chat with concurrently onlinecontacts may also be possible. Access to the profile information may berestricted based upon the level of affiliation to its owner. Forexample, contacts having a direct “friendship” link to a given user maybe able to view the complete profile information thereof, while thosehaving only a secondary affiliation (friend of a friend) may be able toview only the basic biographic information. The establishment of afriendship “network” is understood to facilitate new users to the socialnetwork to establish their own direct links to common friends and,thereby, access to the content of those profiles.

Specific user-to-user communications is a significant aspect of mostsocial networking services, but another feature which perhaps eclipsesthis is the broadcasting of information to everyone within the user'scircle of contacts. Specific names and implementations may vary, withsome social networking services referring to this feature as a “wall,”while others refer to this feature as “comments,” “tweets,” or others.Regardless of the terminology employed, the feature is essentially thesame—a variety of content can be posted by the profile owner or by theprofile owner's contacts for viewing by those within the user's networkof friends. This content may include text messages, Uniform ResourceLocator (URLS) including links to other webpages, photographs, andvideos. With the proliferation of GPS (Global PositioningSatellite)-enabled mobile devices with Internet access capabilities,location coordinate data may also be posted. There may be enhancementsto the display of the foregoing data, such as showing the location on amap overlaid on the rendered page, or a preview of the webpage for alink.

Unfortunately, users with varying interests often have a difficult timelocating each other within such social networking systems as itnecessitates first identifying and establishing a link with another useror a social network of users to which they belong, which may require“knowing” another user who “knows” of a user of interest and/or relianceupon the ability to search and discover information made public by auser which identifies their interests, if any. Additionally, many stepsand a significant amount of time may be required prior to commencing theactual interaction, e.g. that user may have to “accept” a request to beconnected.

Creating communities of people with similar interests may also sufferdrawbacks and difficulties. It may be time consuming and difficult tocreate a community of interest for users that permits interaction.Communities of interest may be difficult to create, especially forneophyte computer users with little experience in the field. If separatesoftware, applets, or plugins are needed to access the community, it maybe difficult to convince prospective community members to find a copy ofor go to the website location for downloading the necessary software,download the software, install and configure it, and use the software tocommunicate with the community. Additionally, it may be difficult topublicize the existence of such a community to others.

Generally, in existing social networking services, the user profilebased access permission premise may make it difficult for users todiscover and expand their interconnections with other users havingsimilar interests.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 depicts a content distribution system that may be used toimplement aspects of the disclosed embodiments.

FIG. 2 depicts detailed block diagrams of some of the components of thesystem of FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 depicts a flow chart showing operation of the system of FIGS. 1and 2.

FIG. 4 shows an illustrative embodiment of a general computer system foruse with the system of FIGS. 1-3.

FIG. 5 shows an example cache content ranking algorithm which may beused by the system of FIGS. 1 and 2.

FIG. 6 shows an example timing diagram of a content caching operationwhich may be performed by the system of FIGS. 1 and 2.

FIG. 7 shows example search query parameters which may be used by thesystem of FIGS. 1 and 2.

FIG. 8 shows an example search algorithm which may be used by the systemof FIGS. 1 and 2.

FIG. 9 shows an example timing diagram of a content request operationwhich may be performed by the system of FIGS. 1 and 2.

FIG. 10 shows an example of query parameter scope paths which may beused by the system of FIGS. 1 and 2.

FIG. 11 shows an example timing diagram of a search request operationwhich may be performed by the system of FIGS. 1 and 2.

FIG. 12 shows an example content ranking algorithm which may be used bythe system of FIGS. 1 and 2.

FIG. 13 depicts an example geographic display enabled by the system ofFIGS. 1 and 2.

FIG. 14 depicts an example interest/keyword selection interface for usewith the system of FIGS. 1 and 2.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The disclosed embodiments relate to systems and methods for efficientlyand automatically distributing content among a plurality of users whichmay be used to implement a social networking service. Content items,which may include “posts” submitted by one user, e.g. responsive to a“post” submitted by another user, are stored in association with dataindicative of a specified subset of an interest category classificationsdefined by the system. Users of the system further specify a subset ofthe interest category classifications to define their interests. Thesystem then provides content items of interest to the user by mapping,as will be described, the defined interests of the user against theinterests associated with the stored content items. The disclosedembodiments enable users to discover and expand their interconnectionswith other users which may have similar interests.

In particular, the disclosed embodiments may effectively continuouslyevaluate a user's defined interests against a database of previouslyreceived content items and their associated interest classifications toidentify an intersection thereof and enable effectively continuousand/or automated discovery of content items of interest, andinterconnection with users responsible therefore which, by virtue oftheir submission of such content, are likely to share one or more commoninterests. Furthermore, discovery of content items of interest may beenhanced via a search mechanism/engine which evaluates a search query toreturn search results from a content database and further iterativelybroadens the scope of the search parameters, autonomously or accordingto user specified preferences, to retrieve additional relevant searchresults which, scope-wise, surround the initial results if any. In thisway, a narrow search which may, by itself produce few if any results,will still provide some results to the user and/or attempt to flush outand return a defined/threshold number of search results to user.

The disclosed embodiments may further provide for efficient distributionof content responsive to a request via a storage architecture whichcaches content items pre-converted to a form that may be readilydistributed. By pre-converting the content items to a form ready fortransmission to a requestor, the system may avoid the delay ofperforming the conversion at the time of the request.

The disclosed embodiments may further facilitate discovery of content ofinterest and users with shared interests by enabling appreciation for auser's geographical, geo-physical and/or geo-political relationship withother users and reducing linguistic impediments to the ability of a userto comprehend content provided by other users. As opposed to identifyingjust topical interests in common with another user, the disclosedembodiments enable further discovery of content of interest and/or userswith common interests based on geographic and/or cultural relationshipsand, by providing language translation, as will be described, enableexchange of content items among user who speak different languages.

Herein, the phrase “coupled with” is defined to mean directly connectedto or indirectly connected through one or more intermediate components.Such intermediate components may include both hardware and softwarebased components. Further, to clarify the use in the pending claims andto hereby provide notice to the public, the phrases “at least one of<A>, <B>, . . . and <N>” or “at least one of <A>, <B>, . . . <N>, orcombinations thereof” are defined by the Applicant in the broadestsense, superseding any other implied definitions herebefore orhereinafter unless expressly asserted by the Applicant to the contrary,to mean one or more elements selected from the group comprising A, B, .. . and N, that is to say, any combination of one or more of theelements A, B, . . . or N including any one element alone or incombination with one or more of the other elements which may alsoinclude, in combination, additional elements not listed.

FIG. 1 depicts a block diagram of a transaction processing system fordistributing content responsive to transaction requests therefore andwhich may be referred to as a content distribution system 100 accordingto one embodiment, which in an exemplary implementation, is implementedas part of a social networking service described above. The disclosedembodiments are preferably implemented with computer devices andcomputer networks, such as those described with respect FIG. 4 andimproved as described herein, that allow users, e.g. members orparticipants, to submit content items to the social networking serviceand receive content items submitted by others. It will be appreciatedthat the plurality of entities utilizing the disclosed embodiments maybe referred to by other nomenclature reflecting the role that theparticular entity is performing with respect to the disclosedembodiments and that a given entity may perform more than one roledepending upon the implementation and the nature of the particulartransaction being undertaken, as well as the entity's contractual and/orlegal relationship with another participant and/or the system 100.

In particular, FIG. 1 depicts a block diagram of a system 100, which mayalso be referred to as an architecture, for automated electronicdistribution of a content item, provided by an external or internalsource, e.g. a client 116 or content generator 134, to the contentdistribution system 100, to a subset of a plurality of users, e.g.clients 116, such as via a network 138, the content distribution systemcomprising a processor, 102, memory 104 coupled with the processor and adata store 124 coupled with the processor 102 and/or memory 104, thememory 104 comprising a cache 118 and the data store comprising one ormore databases 126, 128, 144 including content database 126. In oneembodiment, the network 138, processor 102, memory 104 and data store124 may be implemented by one or more of the network 420, processor 402,the memory 404 and drive unit 406 described below with respect to FIG.4. Alternatively, the cache 118 may be stored in the data store 124, orin a separate memory 104 or data store 124 from where the othercomponents of the system 100, as described below, are stored. It willappreciated that the data store 124 could comprise a memory 404 ormemory 404 in combination with a drive unit 406 and may be logicallyand/or physically combined with the memory 104. It will further beappreciated that some data may also be stored in the client device 116.For example, repetitively used data and/or images or other large contentmay be stored in a local cache memory (not shown) within the device 16which may be maintained by the system 100. When content is transmittedto the device 116, described herein, references to the locally storeddata may be included in transmitted content rather than the data itselfthereby conserving communication bandwidth and/or improving latency asbetween the system 100 and device 116. If the data is not already storedin the device's 116 local cache, e.g. because it was previouslyreferenced or otherwise pre-cached, or the data stored in the localcache is outdated or expired or has otherwise been modified at thesystem 100, the data may be transmitted or re-transmitted by the system100 to the device 116. In one embodiment, the system 100 may employspeculative or predictive caching whereby the system 100 attempts toanticipate what content items may be requested by the device 116 in thefuture, such as based on prior update or search requests, or identifiedtrending content, as described herein, and transmit those content itemsin advance of an explicit request therefore in order to improve or atleast provide the user with the appearance of improvedlatency/performance/responsiveness. In one embodiment, speculative orpredictive caching may only be invoked if elected by the user and/or ifthe available bandwidth between the system 100 and device 116 exceeds athreshold.

In one embodiment, the cache 118 holds about 100 MB of data but it willbe appreciated that the size of the cache 118 may be implementationdependent. In one embodiment, the cache 118 is implemented using theREDIS data structure server, sponsored by Redis Labs, located inMountain View, Calif. The organization and operation of the cache 118 isdescribed in more detail below. In one embodiment, the content database126, or database 126, stored in the data store 124, comprises astructured database including defined data fields and business logic,such as a SQL database. The operation and organization of the database126 is further described below

As used herein, a “content item” may refer to a data item or datastructure which includes content or links/references thereto, e.g. datasuch as one or more text strings, images, etc., generated by the system,e.g. via the content generator 134, and/or by a user of the system, suchas a “post”, comment, statement, picture, URL/web link, hashtag, etc. Acontent item may comprise any edit/update to content previously storedin the system 100 or new content submitted thereto. The content may begenerated responsive to the content of another content item, such as aresponse in a conversation, comment on a topic, etc. Thereby, thecontent item may be related to other content items e.g. via a context,understood by the submitting user. Content items may be characterized asbeing of a particular content type, which in one embodiment, theavailable content types include “user”, “conversation”, and “community”.It will be appreciated that the available content types and theirattributes are implementation dependent and fewer or more content typesmay be implemented. Content items may further be associated with, orotherwise include, a subset of one or more interest classifications orcategories as will be described below. As will be further describedbelow, a content item may be characterized by or implemented in at leasttwo different formats, one for storage in the database 126 and one forcommunication to a user, which, as will be described, is also used tostore the content item in the cache 118. Furthermore, the content of acontent item may be characterized by human communication language, e.g.English, French, Spanish, etc. which may be derived by the system 100from the content or the content item may further include data indicativethereof to identify the language to the system 100.

In one embodiment, content types define how the content item is storedin the database 126, e.g. the database model/structure,schema/field/table definitions and associated business logic andmethods, and content items of different content types may be stored indifferent manner accordingly. The business logic/methods may beconfigured to act on and/or be triggered to act by particular contentitems being stored in the database, e.g. to trigger notifications aswill be described below.

Content characterized as being of content type “user” relates to orotherwise describes users/participants of the system 100, i.e. peoplewho have created an account with the system 100, are active in thesystem 100, have a presence, have a profile page, create posts, and areable to interact with others via the system 100. It will be appreciatedthat users of the system 100 may include actual persons or entities suchas corporations or groups, such as a sports team or club, e.g. where theactivities of the user within the system 100 are administrated by arepresentative thereof. User “content type” content items may includepublic or private profile data about a user, data identifying and/orlinking to other users that are “following” the user, i.e. areinterested in receiving notifications relating to the activities of theuser in the system 100, or who the user is following, data identifyingor linking to the user's activities in the system 100, e.g. contentposts to conversations or subscribed communities, and/or dataidentifying or linking to the user's preferences, privacy settings, e.g.defining who can contact or follow the user, roles within the system,e.g. administrator, moderator, etc. For example, user content items mayinclude the user's name, biographical information, geographic locationor address, username, image to use for presentation of posts via theuser interface, profile image, and current authentication token(described in more detail below). User “content type” content items mayfurther include a selected subset of interest classifications, i.e.keywords, as will be described below. User “content type” content itemsmay further include analytics data which tracks the user's behavior ininteracting with the system 100. For example, in one embodiment, thesystem 100 may implement game mechanics, i.e. rules, methods or logic,wherein User “content type” content items may include an accumulation ofpoints “earned” by the user or an adjustable weight or score value,determined via, for example, based on the user's interactions with thesystem 100, such as by posting content items, etc. and which mayrepresent the “influence” of a particular user. Determining on-lineinfluence of a user in social media may be of use, such as to marketersand public relation (PR) professionals, to determine, filter orotherwise identify relevant subsets of users who should be listened toor otherwise engaged. As used herein, a user profile may refer to thecollection of content items of content type “user” stored in the systemall relating to a particular user. A user profile database may refer tothe collection of user profiles. In one implementation, a separate userprofile database may be provided to store particular user informationsuch as login/authentication credentials, authentication tokens,specific user data, such as data intended to be kept private, etc.

Content items of content type “conversation” include posts, responses,messages or other interactions with other users, by users, generally ina two or more way exchange initiated by one user to at least one otheruser, either directly or implicitly, e.g. via a relationship of thecontent item to a common interest between the users, as will bedescribed. Users participating in conversations may be referred to asparticipants. A conversation may be characterized by a context, e.g. asubject or associated set of interest classifications and a content itemof content type “conversation” may include data indicative thereof. Inone embodiment, content items of a conversation may be accessible onlyto participants thereof or the accessibility to non-participating usersmay be selectively controlled. Alternatively, any user may be able toaccess such content items, i.e. “listen” in on the conversation.

Content items of content type “community” include multiple differentconversations which all relate to a common context/topic/interestclassification and, like conversations, includes posts, responses,messages or other interactions with other users, by users, generally ina two or more way exchange initiated by one user to at least one otheruser, either directly or implicitly, e.g. via a relationship of thecontent item to a common interest between the users, as will bedescribed. Users participating in community may be referred to assubscribers. A community may be characterized by a context wherein eachconversation within the community may be further characterized by asub-context, e.g. a subject or associated set of interestclassifications and a content item of content type “community” mayinclude data indicative thereof. In one embodiment, content items of acommunity may be accessible only to subscribers thereof or theaccessibility to non-subscribing users may be selectively controlled,such as via invitations. Alternatively, any user may be able to accesssuch content items, i.e. “listen” in on the community. Conceptually, acommunity may act more like a forum directed to a particular topic withmultiple conversations occurring related to various sub-topics.Alternatively, it will be appreciated that conversation content itemsmay be implemented to allow multiple contexts to be associated whereconversation content items having an associated context in common areconsidered part of the same community. Community content items mayfurther be associated with data, e.g. a separate data structure,defining the context of the community, the subscribing users, assigninga particular user as a moderator of the community and defining whichusers of the system 100 may subscribe and/or submit posts to thecommunity, and/or identifying a sponsoring entity or user, e.g. allowingfor a branded presentation of the community to users.

In one embodiment, if two or more users are subscribed to the samecommunity or participating in the same conversation and are determinedto be contemporaneously actively connected with the system 100, such asby detecting an active “live” socket indicating a current connectionthereof, any posts or updates to that conversation or community may beimmediately distributed to the other actively connectedsubscribers/participants, such as via the live push module 140 whichwill described in more detail below.

As will be described, the system 100 generally manages the storage andretrieval of content items based on content type and content items arestored in an arrangement, logical and/or physical, based thereon,referred to as “containers”, “interest containers”, “silos”, “buckets”,etc., so as to store related content items, e.g. content items of thesame content type and having the same interest classifications,together. In one embodiment there may be around 1300 differentcontainers however it will be appreciated that the number of containersis implementation dependent and may depend on both the resources, e.g.memory and processing capacity, of the system 100 as well as the desiredlevel of granularity by which the content items are to be organizedand/or made discoverable. It will be appreciated that the containerbased arrangement for storing content items may be implemented byphysically storing content items belonging to the same container in thesame area of the cache 118 or database 126 and/or via a logical linkingof disparately stored content items, e.g. using address or referencepointers, to logically group content items of the same container. Asused herein, an interest container refers to a collection of relatedcontent items, which may be related by one or more keywords or keywordsets, as described elsewhere herein, which are stored logically and/orphysically together and which the system 100 may access, explicitly orby reference, as a collection. As shown in FIG. 2, the content database126 may include containers for user content items 222, conversationcontent items 224 and community content items 226. It will beappreciated that in different implementations thereby may be differentor additional containers within database 126. The cache 118 maysimilarly be organized by containers as described. Each of thecontainers 222, 224, 226 of the database 126 may be further subdividedinto sub-containers, which herein may simply be referred to ascontainers, based on the associated interest categories of the contentitems stored therein. As will be described, the container arrangementfacilitates rapid retrieval of related content items, or subsetsthereof, based on the relevant keywords/interest categories.

Other functionality and associated content/data types and datastructures may also be supported. For example, direct messaging may beprovided which allows one user to directly send a message to anotheruser, such as by interacting with a messaging interface provided on thereceiving users profile/application screen. Direct messages may beprivate and without a context. Direct messages may be stored in the datastore 124 using data structures referred to as “dialogs.” Languagetranslation, as will be described in more detail below, may be provided.A user may define privacy settings within the system 100, e.g. via theiruser profile, which are factored into the business logic to controlwhich other users may be permitted to send them direct messages.

Notification messages may be provided which indicate to a user that aparticular event has occurred in the system 100. Notifications may betriggered by business logic within the database 126 or elsewhere in thesystem 100 based activities of users or the system 100 itself, system100 generated content items. For example, new content items or updatesor modifications to previously submitted content items may triggernotification messages to be communicated to followers of a usersubmitting or updating the content item, and/or participating orsubscribed users to updated conversations or communities. Notificationmessages may be presented to users via the user interface 146 of theirdevice 116. Notification messages may be stored in a data structure inconjunction with data indicative of the life cycle of that message, e.g.whether it was sent, received, read, deleted, etc. A user may defineprivacy settings, e.g. via their user profile, which are factored intothe business logic, to control the receipt of notification messagesand/or the generation of notification messages based on theiractivities.

A user role data model/structure may be provided and stored in the datastore 124 which is associated with all communities and stores a list ofcommunities to which each user is subscribed and the roles they havewithin those communities, e.g. owner, moderator, contributor, read only,etc.

As described above, content items may be generated by users andsubmitted to the system 100 or they may be created by the system 100itself. User originated content items may include posts, comments,images or other user generated content, URL web links, hashtags, contentcopied from other web pages/sites, etc. In one embodiment, the interface146 used by the user via their client device 116 may permit them tonavigate to any web page or web site and “capture” content therefrom asa content item to be submitted to the system 100. Alternatively, thesystem 100 may provide a widget, overlay or web browser plug-in or appwhich provides this functionality. For example, the interface mayprovide a “like” or “post” button, implemented for example via a webbrowser plugin application, which appears on the user's display as theynavigate to web sites and web pages. When the user selects the likebutton proximate to web content they wish to submit to the system 100, alink is generated or the content is extracted, e.g. by the contentscraping processing module 220 (shown in FIG. 2) of the contentgenerator 134, formed into a content item and transmitted to the system100. In one implementation, a Ruby on Rails GEM known as MetaInspectoris utilized to extract the web content and form the content item. In oneembodiment used in conjunction with the iOS operating system publishedby Apple, Inc., located in Cupertino, Calif., the interface or app maybe integrated with web browser provided by the operating system,referred to as deep linking, which allows a user to select a link, suchas via long-press or 3D press interface interaction, an elect to havethe link or data related thereto be transferred by the operating systemto the interface or app. Further, the system 100 may generate contentitems, which may be referred to as “stories”, using, e.g. the contentgenerator 134 and trending processing module 218 (shown in FIG. 2)thereof, which accesses defined external content sources, such as websites or news feed services which provide, for example, current news orentertainment stories, extracts, using, for example the content scrapingprocessing module 220, content therefrom and forms the extracted contentinto content items, and associates appropriate interest classificationstherewith, which are then associated with/added to relevantconversations or communities. System 100 generated content may be usedto fill content gaps when there is little user activity, to seedcommunities or conversations to initiate user interaction therewith, orgenerally to provide content of interest related to current trends orevents to users.

As was described above, content items are associated with one or moreinterest classifications, also referred to as interest categories orclassifications, which define the context of the content of the contentitem for the purpose of distributing and/or facilitating discovery ofthat content item as described herein. Furthermore, users of the system100 specify one or more interest classifications to define what theirinterests are. The system 100 maps or otherwise correlates the interestsof each user against the interest classification(s) of content items todetermine which content items to transmit to a user.

In one embodiment, these interest classifications/categories areimplemented as keyword metadata, keywords or tags associated with thecontent items, e.g. stored in conjunction with the content items, eitherexplicitly or by reference as will be described. Generally, tags may beconsidered a “bottom-up” type of classification, compared tohierarchies, which are “top-down”. In a traditional hierarchical system(taxonomy), the designer sets out a limited number of terms to use forclassification, and there is one correct way to classify each item. In atagging system, there are an unlimited number of ways to classify anitem, and there is no “wrong” choice. Instead of belonging to onecategory, an item may have several different tags. Some researchers andapplications have experimented with combining structured hierarchy and“flat” tagging to aid in information retrieval. Tags may describe ordefine some aspect of an information resource (such as a document,digital image, relational table, or web page) and may capture knowledgein the form of descriptions, categorizations, classifications,semantics, comments, notes, annotations, hyperdata, hyperlinks, orreferences and may be collected in tag profiles which reference aninformation resource that resides in a distributed, and oftenheterogeneous, storage repository. Tags may be used to capture insights,expertise, attributes, dependencies, or relationships associated with adata resource.

As was described above, content items contain content generated by usersor by the system 100 however, the semantics, meaning or context of thatcontent, while being potentially easy, subject to any ambiguity therein,for a human being to comprehend, may not be readily discerned by thesystem 100, particularly when content is provided in differentlanguages, to enable categorization or interest/context based searchfunctions. Further, interests, or the semantics thereof, of a user maybe difficult to formulate and document in a manner which can be readilyelectronically processed. Generally, the meaning or relevance of contentor the interests of users reside in the knowledge of the user/creator.Knowledge may be defined as information possessed in the mind of anindividual: it is personalized or subjective information related tofacts, procedures, concepts, interpretations, ideas, observations andjudgments (which may or may not be unique, useful, accurate, orstructurable). Tags facilitate the capture of knowledge in the system100, e.g. of the meaning/relevance of content or the interest of users.

In one embodiment, a taxonomy of tags, e.g. keyword metadata orkeywords, is provided. Alternatively, the system 100 may permit users todefine or curate the available keywords, e.g. a folksonomy, or acombination of a taxonomy and folksonomy may be implemented. In oneembodiment, the available keyword metadata of the system 100 isorganized into a plurality of keyword sets/hierarchies, where eachkeyword set includes a hierarchical sequence of keywords, wherein foreach keyword set a first keyword of the sequence of keywords definessemantics or a context, different from the semantics or context definedby a first keyword of a different keyword set, and each subsequentkeyword of the sequence of the keyword set defines a narrowing of thesemantics/context over the previous keyword of the sequence of thekeyword set. For example, one keyword set may include the sequence ofkeywords: Drinks; Alcohol; Wine; White; Pino Grigio; California;Berringer. Another keyword set may include the sequence of keywords:World: North America: United States: Illinois: Cook County: Chicago:Lincoln Park. It will be appreciated that the narrowing of thesemantics/context may be explicit based on the definition/semantics ofthe keyword itself and/or implicit based the ordering of the keywords inthe sequence within the keyword set, i.e. the first keyword of a keywordset is always the broadest followed by the next narrowest keyword and soon regardless of the semantics/context associated with the keyworditself. Keyword sets are defined for various classifications ofinterests, and various scopes thereof. The number of keyword sets, aswell as the number keywords/levels within each set is implementationdependent and, theoretically, unlimited. In one embodiment, each keywordset includes up to three keywords but may include more or less. In oneembodiment, keyword sets may intersect, i.e. have one or more of thesame keywords in common, but the appearance of those keywords in eachkeyword set sequence may vary. In an alternate embodiment, keywords setsdo not overlap, i.e. each keyword is included in only one keyword set.

Content items are associated with data indicative of a subset of one ormore of the keywords selected from the plurality of keyword sets. Itwill be understood that, as used herein, a subset of a set may refer tothe entire set, e.g. an “improper” subset. Any of the keywords in akeyword set may be selected based on its breadth, applicability, etc.Selection of any keyword in a set may automatically associate allbroader keywords of the set, just the next broadest, or just the overallbroadest keyword thereof, with the content item. keywords from multiplekeywords sets may be selected. The associated keywords for a givencontent item may be specified by the submitting user, may be defined orotherwise inherited based on the context of the submission, e.g. aresponse to post in a conversation may inherit associated keywords ofthat post, automatically defined by the system 100 based on otherattributes of the content item or the by which it was obtained, orcombinations thereof.

Users are also associated with a subset of one or more of the keywordsselected form the plurality of keyword sets wherein the keywords areselected, explicitly or implicitly by user and/or system 100, based ontheir interests. Any of the keywords in a keyword set may be selectedbased on its breadth, applicability, etc. keywords from multiplekeywords sets may be selected. Keywords may be selected by the userand/or assigned automatically by the system 100, either via explicitaction or derived/implied from actions by the user, such as based useractivity within the system 100, e.g. if a user selects a community toview the content thereof, the associated keywords of that community maybe assigned to the user. In one embodiment, user selected keywords arestored separate, e.g. in a separate content item or container associatedwith that user, from keywords which are automatically selected by thesystem 100 for that user.

As depicted in FIG. 14, keywords, for association with a user or with acontent item, may be selected from a user interface 1400 provided by thesystem 100 via the client 116/UI 146, such as a hierarchical selectioninterface which allows a user to navigate the various keyword sets andpick from the available keywords therein. In one embodiment, thisinterface 1400 may be presented as a circle or wheel 1402 along thecircumference of which are selectable indicators 1404 of the availablekeyword sets. Selecting an indicator 1404, or hovering a pointer thereover, expands the keyword set, in its entirety or incrementally (notshown), to display the sequence of keywords therein available forselection. Alternatively, the interface 1400 could comprise ahierarchical menu tree featuring selectable and/or expandable menus andsub-menus of keywords. In one embodiment, selection of a particularkeyword for association with the user or with a content item selects theselected keyword and all broader keywords in the sequence. It will beappreciated that the more keywords sets are associated with a user orcontent item, the broader the applicable content/interests may bedefined where as the more keywords within each set which are associatedwith the content item or user, the narrower the applicablecontent/interest may be defined.

Similarly, a user interface may be provided by the system 100, such asvia the client 116/UI 146, which enables a user to visualize theselected keywords associated with the user or with the content item. Inone embodiment, this visualization may take the form of a hierarchicalor tree display showing each keyword and the keyword set to which itbelongs. Where keyword sets are permitted to overlap, intersectionsamong selected keywords may be depicted. In one embodiment, the treevisualization is arranged in a circular/branching pattern to resemble asnow-flake, lattice, organizational chart, outline, etc.

In one embodiment, the keyword sets are stored in an interest databaseor data structure stored in the data store 124 wherein each keyword isassociated with a unique identifier. Associations between users orcontent items and keywords are implemented by storing the associatedidentifiers of the selected keywords in association therewith.Alternatively, the actual selected keywords may be stored in associationwith the content item or user. In another alternative embodiment,identifiers of the users or content items may be stored in associationwith the selected keywords. In one embodiment, keywords of differentspoken languages which have the same meaning may be stored together inassociation with same keyword identifier, thereby facilitatingmultilingual support. Alternatively, given the cultural and contextualdifferences among keywords of different languages, even where keywordsof different languages are generally accepted as having the samemeaning, all such keywords may be treated separately. In one embodiment,each keyword may be further associated with a language code, e.g.selected from table below, indicating the particular language of thekeyword to distinguish those keywords which have the same spelling orappearance in multiple languages.

As was describe above, and explained in more detail below, content itemsare stored in the database 126 or cache 118 in containers, e.g.containers 222, 224, 226 shown in FIG. 2, which are defined based on theassociated keyword data. In this manner, thereby, received content itemsare stored in association with other stored previously received contentitems whose associated data is indicative of a subset of the pluralityof keywords which at least partially overlaps the subset of theplurality of keywords associated with the received content item, e.g.within the same conversation and/or container.

Generally, the association of keywords facilitates the discovery ofcontent that is of interest to the user by enabling the system 100 tocorrelate the interests of the user against the context/relevance of theavailable content items and content items related thereto. In oneimplementation this may be accomplished by mapping the keywordsassociated with a content item on to the keywords associated with theuser in a similar manner to they way a fingerprint is matched. Inexactmatches may be allowed and/or the degree and manner in which associatedsubsets of keywords are required to overlap and/or allowed to divergeand still be considered a match may vary. In one embodiment, the system100 employs fuzzy logic, a form of many-valued logic, to determine,based on associated keywords/keyword sets, which content items match thegiven interests of a user. In one embodiment, the user may specify, aswill be described below, the degree to which the keywords/keyword setsdefining their interest categories must match the keywords/keyword setsassociated with content items and/or the degree to which particularsubsets of keywords/keyword sets defining their interests or associatedwith a given content item must match. In one implementation, the userinterface 146 displays a slide control which defines a range ofexactness for the system 100 when identifying suitable content items forthe user, which allows a user to set, via moving an indicator along theslide control, the desired exactness from less specific/exact tospecific/exact. Storing content items in containers based on theirassociated keywords facilitate rapid retrieval of those content items,and content items related thereto, responsive to a request, e.g. asearch request, therefore.

Once a user has identified content items of interest, e.g. aconversation, community or other user, they may choose to participate inthe conversation, subscribe to the community and/or follow the user. Aswas described above, in one embodiment, separate data structures aremaintained by the system 100 to track each user's participation inconversations, subscriptions to communities or followed users so thatnew content items and updates associated therewith may be provided tothe user. Accordingly, if a user subsequently alters their associatedkeywords, e.g. modifies their interests/interest profile, their currentparticipation, subscriptions or follows will not change, unlessexplicitly modified by the user. In an alternative embodiment, if a usermodifies their keywords, i.e. changes their interest profile, such thata particular conversation they are participating in, community they aresubscribed to or user they are following would not have been provided tothem via a search based on their current interest profile, they will beremoved from those conversations, unsubscribed from those communities orunfollowed from those users, either automatically or upon receipt of aconfirmation from the user.

As was described above, the content distribution system 100 may beimplemented with one or more mainframe, desktop or other computers, suchas the computer 400 described below with respect to FIG. 4, or clustersthereof, which may be referred to as a “cloud computing system”, “cloudcomputing environment” or “the cloud,” coupled with a network 138, whichmay be the network 420 described with respect to FIG. 4. The networkenvironment 138 shown in FIG. 1 in which the content distribution systemmay be implemented may include exemplary computer/client devices 116 andmay include different exemplary methods or media by which acomputer/client device 116 may be coupled with the content distributionsystem 100 or by which a user/participant may communicate, e.g. send andreceive, electronically, requests for content items and responsesthereto. It will be appreciated that the types of computer/clientdevices 116 deployed by participants/users and the methods and media bywhich they communicate with the content distribution system 100 isimplementation dependent and may vary and that not all of the depictedcomputer devices and/or means/media of communication may be used andthat other computer devices and/or means/media of communications, nowavailable or later developed may be used. As used herein, a reference toa “user” of the system may refer either or both a human being or aclient device 116 operated thereby.

Each computer/client device 116, of which there may be many and each ofwhich may comprise a computer 400 described in more detail below withrespect to FIG. 4, may include a central processor that controls theoverall operation of the device and a system bus that connects thecentral processor to one or more conventional components, such as anetwork card or modem. Each computer/client device 116 may also includea variety of interface units and drives for reading and writing data orfiles and communicating with other computer devices and with the contentdistribution system 100. Depending on the type of computer/client device116, a user can interact with the device 116 via a userinterface/display 146 which may include a keyboard, pointing device,microphone, touch screen, pen device, graphic display or other input oroutput device now available or later developed. The client device 116may execute an application which facilitates access to/interaction withthe system 100, such as a dedicated or proprietary “app” programspecifically designed to facilitate access to/interaction with thesystem 100 and/or a generic application, such as a web browserapplication, which facilitates access to/interaction with anapplication, e.g. web page or web site, available over the network 138and which may be provided by the system 100, such as via a web server,not shown, which is specifically configured to enable accessto/interaction with the system 100 as described herein. Referencesherein to a client or client device 116 will refer to a device 116 whichis executing an application or other software, including a web browserapplication, to provide, or provide access to, an interface specificallyconfigured to facilitate user interaction with the system 100.

An exemplary computer/client device 116 is shown directly connected tosystem 100, such as via a TI line, a common local area network (LAN),wide are network (WAN) or other wired and/or wireless medium 138 forconnecting computer devices, such as the network 420 shown in FIG. 4 anddescribed below with respect thereto, and may be composed of one or morepublic, e.g. the Internet, or private wired and/or wireless networks andconfigured in one or more of the well-known LAN topologies, e.g. star,daisy chain, etc., and may use a variety of different protocols, such asEthernet, TCP/IP, etc. The exemplary computer devices 116 maycommunicate with each other and with other computer and other deviceswhich are coupled with the network 138. Computer and other devices maybe coupled with the LAN 124 via twisted pair wires, coaxial cable, fiberoptics or other wired or wireless media, e.g. WiFi, Bluetooth and/or acellular telephone based data communications protocol. The exemplarycomputer/client device 116 may include a laptop or desktop computer,tablet devices, cellular telephone, smart phone, or other wirelessproprietary and/or non-proprietary device. It will be appreciated wherethe network 138 between the client devices 116 and the system 100utilize multipath protocols such as mesh networking, packet switching,TCP/IP, etc., multiple physical and/or logical communications routes maybe available over which a given electronic data transaction requestmessage may travel when being communicated over these networks. Thechoice of route over all or a portion of the network 138 may or may notbe under the control user, the client device 116 and/or the system 100,e.g. routing may be subject to error correction protocols, congestioncontrol protocols, quality of service protocols, outages or intermittenterrors.

The operations of client devices 116 shown in FIG. 1 may be controlledby computer-executable instructions stored on a non-transitorycomputer-readable medium. For example, the exemplary computer device 116may include computer-executable instructions for receiving content orqueries from a user, transmitting that content or query to the system100 and receiving and presenting responses thereto to the user.

Of course, numerous additional servers, computers, handheld devices,personal digital assistants, telephones and other devices may also beconnected to the system 100. Moreover, one skilled in the art willappreciate that the topology shown in FIG. 1 is merely an example andthat the components shown in FIG. 1 may include other components notshown and be connected by numerous alternative topologies.

While the disclosed embodiments will be described with reference to thetreatment of the submission of single content item or receipt of ssingle request for previously received content items, in operation itwill be appreciated that the disclosed system is continuously/regularlyreceiving content item submissions or updates and servicing requests forcontent items. The disclosed databases may be updated in real time, i.e.as content items, or updates, are received and may respond to requestsfor content in real time. As users may connect and disconnect from thesystem at will or otherwise on an ad hoc basis, the system 100 isdesigned to respond to requests for content items in a manner whichaccounts for a user not being connected to the system 100 at the time aparticular content item was received, as will be described.

Referring to FIG. 1, the system 100 further includes a content receiver106 coupled with the network 138, which may be implemented as a separatecomponent or as one or more logic components, such as on an FPGA whichmay include a memory or reconfigurable component to store logic andprocessing component to execute the stored logic, or as first logic 106,e.g. computer program logic, stored in a memory 104, or othernon-transitory computer readable medium, and executable by a processor102, such as the processor 402 and memory 404 described below withrespect to FIG. 4, to cause the processor 202 to, or otherwise beoperative to receive the content item from the source, e.g. a userdevice 116 or internally generated by the system 100, the content itembeing associated, upon receipt or via data included therewith, with dataindicative of a subset of a plurality of keywords selected from aplurality of keyword sets, each keyword set comprising a hierarchicalsequence of keywords, wherein for each keyword set a first keyword ofthe sequence of keywords defines a context, different from a contextdefined by a first keyword of a different keyword set, and eachsubsequent keyword of the sequence of the keyword set defines anarrowing of the context over the previous keyword of the sequence ofthe keyword set. Content items may be submitted responsive to request orprompt generated by the system 100 and transmitted to the source or maybe unsolicited.

In one embodiment, as was described above, the content distributionsystem further comprises a category database 148, which may be stored inthe data store 124 or memory 104, operative to store the plurality ofkeyword sets wherein each keyword within each keyword set is identifiedby a unique identifier, and further wherein the data indicative of asubset of the plurality of keywords comprises the unique identifiers ofthe respective keywords as stored in the category database 148.

It will be appreciated that the associated subset of keywords for areceived content item may be defined by the user prior to submission ofthe content item and included therewith, or defined by the user afterthe content item has been submitted, such as via a user interface whichpresents the content item and provides a mechanism for navigating andselecting one or more keywords from the available keyword sets as wasdescribed above. Alternatively, or in addition thereto, the system 100may automatically assign one or more keywords to the content item uponreceipt, such as by analyzing the content of the content item or thecontext from which the content item was received, e.g. based onattributes of a web page from which the content item was obtained. Inone embodiment, when a content item received by the system 100 isrelated to another content item that was previously received by thesystem 100, e.g. a response to another post, the newly received contentitem inherits one or more of the keywords associated with the previouslyreceived content item. The subset of keywords associated with aparticular content item may be static, i.e. once defined never change,or dynamic, i.e. are modifiable by users or by the system 100 to addand/or remove keywords. Modifications may be restricted by user, e.g.restricted to selected users such as only the submitting user, and/or bytype, e.g. keywords may only be added to the subset but not removed.

Where content items or, as will be described below, requests for contentitems are submitted by users, users may first be required toauthenticate or otherwise login to the system 100. An authenticationprocessor 142 may be provided to authenticate or otherwise allow a userto login to the system. The authentication processor 142 may be coupledwith a user database (not shown) which maintains data regarding userswho are authorized to access the system 100, such as users who havepreviously registered with the system 100. In implementations of thesystem 100 where users utilize a client application executing in theirdevice 116 to access the system 100, the client application mayimplement a login or authentication process with the user to capture theuser's login credentials, e.g. user identifier and password. Inimplementations using a web site or web page to access the system 100,the system 100 may provide functionality which facilitateslogin/authentication to the system 100. Various methods oflogin/authentication may be supported including Open Standard forAuthorization (“OAuth”), an authorization protocol that allows athird-party website or application to access a user's data without theuser needing to share login credentials, via a user's Facebook orTwitter accounts, and using email credentials through an account set updirectly with the system 100. Once authenticated with the system 100,the system 100 may provide an authentication token to the user/device116 which is also stored in the user profile data in the database 126,or elsewhere. The authentication token is then communicated with eachtransmission to the system 100 by the device 116, e.g. in the user-agentheader string. Upon receipt the authentication token is validatedagainst the stored authentication token to confirm that thesubmission/request is authorized.

The system 100 further includes a database manager 108 coupled withdatabase 126 and the content receiver 106, which may be implemented as aseparate component or as one or more logic components, such as on anFPGA which may include a memory or reconfigurable component to storelogic and processing component to execute the stored logic, or as secondlogic 108, e.g. computer program logic, stored in a memory 104, or othernon-transitory computer readable medium, and executable by a processor102, such as the processor 402 and memory 404 described below withrespect to FIG. 4, to cause the processor 202 to, or otherwise beoperative to store each of the received content item in a first formatin the database 126 in association with data indicative of at least asubset of the subset of the plurality of keywords associated with thereceived content item. This process may be referred to as ContentProcessing and implemented by a content processing module 216 (shown inFIG. 2) of the database manager 126. The first format may comprise astructured or fielded format compatible with a structured databasewherein the database organization defines context of the data storedtherein, allows for updates of individual fields without having modifyother fields, etc. Generally, the data store 124 holds long term dataand other operational data for the system 100, including the contentdatabase 126.

The system 100 further includes a cache manager 110 coupled with thecache 118 and the content receiver 106, which may be implemented as aseparate component or as one or more logic components, such as on anFPGA which may include a memory or reconfigurable component to storelogic and processing component to execute the stored logic, or as thirdlogic 110, e.g. computer program logic, stored in a memory 104, or othernon-transitory computer readable medium, and executable by a processor102, such as the processor 402 and memory 404 described below withrespect to FIG. 4, to cause the processor 202 to, or otherwise beoperative to determine whether to store the received content item in thecache 118 and, where it is determined to store the received content itemin the cache 118, store, explicitly or implicitly, each of the receivedcontent item in a second format, different from the first format, in thecache 118 in association with data indicative of at least a subset ofthe subset of the plurality of keywords associated with the receivedcontent item, e.g. in the associated interest container. Thereby, as wasdescribed above, the received content item is stored in association withother stored previously received content items whose associated data isindicative of a subset of the plurality of keywords which at leastpartially overlaps the subset of the plurality of keywords associatedwith the received content item, e.g. in the associated interestcontainer. The cache manager 110 and cache 118 may be implemented usingthe REDIS data structure server. The cache manager 110 may further beimplemented as an asynchronous task. In one embodiment, content itemsare stored in the cache 118. Alternatively, content items 118 may belogically stored in the cache, e.g. they may be stored elsewhere in thememory 104 or data store 126 with reference identifiers/pointers theretobeing stored in the cache 118. In one embodiment, the cache 118 may besized to hold a container for every subset of keywords, e.g. everyinterest category, supported by the system 100. In addition, the contentitem stored in the cache 118 in the second format may be further storedin association with a reference identifier/pointer to the correspondingcontent items stored in the database 126 in the first format.

In one embodiment, upon initial startup of the system 100, an initialprocess may “seed” or otherwise pre-load the cache 118 with contentitems from the database 126 and converted from the first format to thesecond format. This seeding process may evaluate content items stored inthe database 126 to determine a ranking value thereof, as describedelsewhere herein, and preload the cache 118 with those content itemswhose ranking value exceeds a threshold value.

In one embodiment, the second format comprises JavaScript ObjectNotation (“JSON”). JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is used. JSON is alightweight text-based open standard for human-readable datainterchange. It is used for serializing and transmitting structured dataover a network connection. It may be used to transmit data between thesystem 100 and the device 116, providing a more efficient alternative tohtml. Although JSON is used in the exemplary embodiment, other formats,such as Extensible Markup Language (XML) can be used as a means ofcommunication between the device layer and the application layer. In oneembodiment, content items are converted to the second formation usingresponse templates to convert from the first format to the secondformat. As shown in FIG. 2, the cache manager 110 may further include aresponse template processing component 212 which converts content itemsinto the second format for storage in the cache 118.

In one embodiment, the second format is suitable for and used totransmit content items to the devices 116 whereas it is not suitable touse to store the content items in the database 126 because, for example,it is not compatible with the structure of the database 126. Forexample, JSON strings are easily transmitted as data packets over anetwork and easily rendered by the receiving device 116 to display thecontent items on the UI 146. However, JSON strings may not easily beparsed, managed or maintained as, for example, updating individualfields of data within a JSON string may require modifying the entirestring. In contrast, a structured database may break up and storecontent item as multiple fields of data in one or more tables where thedatabase structure imparts context to the data and facilitates fieldbased queries and data modifications. As the disclosed system 100utilizes two different formats for two purposes, it is necessary toconvert content items from one format to the other depending on thepurpose for which the content item is being used, e.g. stored in thedatabase 126 or transmitted to the device 116. By caching content itemsin the second format, less processing resources are required whenserving requests for those content items as they need not be convertedto the second format before being transmitted to the device 116,resulting in improved response latencies and system 100 performance. Bystoring content items in the database 126 in the first format, systemperformance with respect to maintaining and identifying those contentitems is improved over performing such functions with respect to thesecond format.

In one embodiment, wherein the received content item is furthersequentially and/or temporally associated with one or more previouslyreceived content items, e.g. related to a conversation or community, thereceived content item and the previously received content items beingstored in the cache 118 and/or database 126 in association with eachother, e.g. in a container, such that any determination of whether thereare any previously received content items stored in the cache 118 and/ordatabase 126 responsive to a request which identifies one of thereceived content or sequentially associated one or more previouslyreceived content items causes all, or a subset, of the received contentand sequentially associated one or more previously received contentitems to be retrieved. In one embodiment, the set of associated one ormore previously received content items are further divided into ordered,e.g. temporally, subsets, referred to as “pages”. In one embodiment,each subset may be sized to hold a sufficient number of content items tofill a defined display area of the user interface 146 of the device 116,e.g. one “screen full” and/or may include additional content items so asto create seamless/continuous viewing experience, in concert withtransmission of the next subset, for the user when scrolling through thetransmitted subset. Upon retrieval of a given content item, the subsetor page of content items containing the retrieved content item may betransmitted to the user/device 116 first. As the user, via the userinterface 146 of the device 116 interacts with the transmitted page,e.g. navigates to or views the last or next to last content item in thetransmitted page, the user interface 146 may cause the device 116 toautomatically request the next page from the system 100. Alternatively,or in addition thereto, the user interface 146 may provide a control,e.g. a “more” button, enabling the user to manually cause the device 116to request the next, or a particular, subset/page. In this way, e.g. forlarge conversations, the content items thereof are sent in subsets ondemand thereby saving bandwidth and processing resources of the both thesystem 100 and device 116. It will be appreciated that the cache maystore a limited number of containers and/or a limited umber ofconversations or communities within each container, e.g. 100conversations.

In one embodiment, the cache manager 110 is further operative todetermine whether the cache 118 has available capacity and store thereceived content item in the cache when the cache has availablecapacity. In one implementation the size of the cache 118 may 100megabytes. In one embodiment the cache manager 110, via the cachemaintenance processing module 214 (shown in FIG. 2) is further operativeto evaluate, periodically and/or when the cache 118 is full or almostfull, each or a subset of content items stored in the cache to compute aranking value thereof, using the content ranking processor 216, and,wherein the computed ranking value does not exceed a threshold value,remove the content item or subset of content items from the cache.

In one embodiment, the cache manager 110 is further operative todetermine to store the received content item in the cache 118 ifpreviously received content items, whose associated data is indicativeof a subset of the plurality of keywords which at least partiallyoverlaps the subset of the plurality of keywords associated with thereceived content item, are stored in the cache 118. Accordingly, if aconversation or community is presently cached, new posts or updates tothat conversation or community will also be cached.

In one embodiment, the cache manager 110 is further operative tocompute, using the content ranking processing module 216, a rankingvalue of the received content item and store the received content itemin the cache 118 if the computed ranking value exceeds a threshold. Inone embodiment, the threshold is based on the computed ranking value ofat least a subset of other previously received content items stored inthe cache. Content items may be ranked as shown in FIG. 5. In oneembodiment, this ranking is computed periodically. Alternatively, or inaddition thereto, it may be computed when the content item is stored inthe cache 118 and may be recomputed when the content item, having beenpreviously removed from the cache 118, is retrieved from the contentdatabase 126 and again stored in the cache 118. In one embodiment, thecontent item is physically or logically stored in the cache 118according to its ranking value, i.e. the cache 118 is organized byranking values.

In particular, the cache manager 110 may rank content using the RankValue 505 computed by the ranking algorithm 500 of FIG. 5 of a contentitem. When a content item is created or updated, content ranking module216 shown in FIG. 2 may calculate and store a rank value in associationtherewith which may then be used to cull that content item from thecache 118 when the capacity thereof is reached or exceeded, e.g. thelowest ranked content items may be removed until sufficient space iscleared.

The Content Ranking Algorithm 500 uses a number of positive metrics tocalculate a Score value 515 and combines this with a Decay value 510which is created from a number of negative metrics. These two valuescombine to create the Rank Value 505 of a piece of content. The RankValue of a content item determines its rank order in the cache 118. Thescore value 515 is determined by a combination of weights associatedwith content Replies, Views, Likes, and Shares. The decay value 510 isdetermined by a combination of weights associated with the age of thepiece of content and the Activity Rate of a piece of content. The agevariable uses a logarithmic decline which lets new conversations competewith existing conversations when ranked in the ranking system. TheActivity Rate is based on the time between user actions on a contentitem.

In one implementation, the caching of content items may operate as shownin FIG. 6. In particular, client devices 116 may create, alter or updatecontent items, e.g. by creating conversations or communities or postingin to existing conversations (010). Upon receipt by system 100 of thecontent item (011), the content item is stored to the database 126, aswas described above (012). The cache manager 110, e.g., an asynchronoustask thereof, updates the cache 118 with content item converted to thesecond format, e.g. JSON, by the template processing 212 (shown in FIG.2) (013). This is saved in a JSON template form which requires no serverside parsing before returning it to a client 116. In the case of a postmade into an existing conversation, i.e. any conversation or one thathas had a post within a recent time period, a 3rd call is made to a livesubscription service 140 which sends the updated post immediately to allusers who are currently subscribed to the associated conversation andconnected to the system 100 (014). Subscribed and connected clients 116receive the new post data and display it in the UI 146.

It will be appreciated that the system 100 may include other caches (notshown) to improve the performance of the system 100 including a searchcache which stores the most recent and/or most often submitted searchqueries, a communities cache which stores statistical data relating touser activities within a community such as the number an/or identify ofmembers, number of posts, etc., and a language cache, described in moredetail below, which stored the most recent and/or most often usedtranslations of content between different languages.

The system 100 further includes a request receiver 112 coupled with thenetwork 138, which may be implemented as a separate component or as oneor more logic components, such as on an FPGA which may include a memoryor reconfigurable component to store logic and processing component toexecute the stored logic, or as fourth logic 112, e.g. computer programlogic, stored in a memory 104, or other non-transitory computer readablemedium, and executable by a processor 102, such as the processor 402 andmemory 404 described below with respect to FIG. 4, to cause theprocessor 202 to, or otherwise be operative to receive a request forcontent from a requestor, e.g. at least one of the plurality ofusers/devices 116 via a network 138 coupled therewith.

As will be described in more detail below, requests received by thesystem 100, which may be implemented as application program interface(API) calls, include update/refresh requests to receive the most recentnew or modified content items, as well as search requests to receivespecific content items matching a specified query. Requests may includethe authentication token described above to validate the requesting useras being authorized to access the system. Update/refresh requests, whichmay also be referred to as implicit search requests, use the user'sprofile data, and the associated keyword/interest categories definedtherein, to identify all content items in the system which match theuser's interests. In one embodiment, update requests are automaticallygenerated and transmitted to the system 100 by the application executingon the device 116 to “pull” updated content items when the deviceconnects and is authenticated with the system 100, and may further begenerated on an ad hoc basis by a user utilizing a refresh functionprovided by the UI 146 of their device 116. Alternatively, or inaddition thereto, the system 100 may determine when content items ofinterest to a user have been updated, determine when users are currentlyconnected, e.g. based on live sockets, and based thereon automaticallytransmit, i.e. “push”, updated content items to the user's device 116.Search requests, which may be referred to as explicit search requests,specify a query, will be described below, to cause the system 100 toreturn specific content items. Search requests may be manually generatedby the user or may be automatically generated by the applicationexecuting on the device 116, such as via UI functions selectable by theuser to retrieve particular content items, e.g. content items relatingto a specific topic and/or time period.

In one embodiment, for at least the purpose of processing updaterequests, the system 100 further includes a user database, coupled withthe processor, which may comprise the user content items 222 (shown inFIG. 2), as was described above, stored in the database 126 or may be aseparate database stored in the data store 124 or memory 104, whichincludes a plurality of data records, each associated with one user ofthe plurality of users, each data record further comprising dataindicative of a subset of the plurality of keywords selected, e.g.interest categories selected by the user as described above, from theplurality of keyword sets, wherein the request for content comprises anupdate request, the search manager 114 is further operative to identifythe user from which the request for content was received, retrieve thedata record from the user database associated with the identified userand determine the identified keywords to use to locate the content itemsof interest based on the subset of the plurality of keywords of theretrieved data record. In one embodiment, request may be temporallylimited, e.g. the time of receipt of the request for content as comparedto a previously received request for content received from the same useris determined and only content items that were not previously sent tothe user are sent responsive to the request. Alternatively, the device116, or application executing thereon, may communicate an indication ofthe state of any content items stored locally in the device 116 whereinthe system 100 utilizes the provided state information to avoid sendingredundant or irrelevant/outdated content items to the user.

Alternatively, it will be appreciated that the user's interestcategories/keywords may be stored in the device 116 and transmitted tothe system 100 as part of the request.

The system 100 further includes a search manager 114 coupled with therequest receiver 112, database manager 108 and cache manager 110, whichmay be implemented as a separate component or as one or more logiccomponents, such as on an FPGA which may include a memory orreconfigurable component to store logic and processing component toexecute the stored logic, or as fifth logic 114, e.g. computer programlogic, stored in a memory 104, or other non-transitory computer readablemedium, and executable by a processor 102, such as the processor 402 andmemory 404 described below with respect to FIG. 4, to cause theprocessor 202 to, or otherwise be operative to identify, automaticallybased on the received request, one or more keywords selected from theplurality of keyword sets. This process may be referred to as InterestProcessing and performed by an Interest Processing module 202 (shown inFIG. 2) of the search manager 114. They identified keywords may beautomatically identified from the user profile associated with the userwho submitted the request, as described above, and/or may have beenincluded with the request, e.g. in an explicit query.

In one embodiment, an explicit search query may include one or more of aplurality of available search/query parameters 700, shown in FIG. 7. Itwill be appreciated that other search parameters may be made availableinstead of or in addition to those listed in FIG. 7 and some searchparameters may be required with any search request while others areoptional. The values of the various search parameters may be specifiedas one or more specific values and/or value ranges thereof. The searchmanager 114, in one embodiment, includes an input processing module 228(shown in FIG. 2) which processes the search request to determine thesearch parameters included therein and values/value ranges thereof anddetermines the proper search method to invoke within the searchprocessing module 202 (shown in FIG. 2).

The search processing module 202 includes/implements a set ofmethods/processes which search the database 126 and the cache 118, aswill be described, for query matches based on the search parametersspecified in the request. As will be described, the search processingmodule 202 may communicate with the response quota processing module 206to ensure a minimum required result set is met and expands it's searchscope using the scope processing module 208 when the minimum result setis not met. These three modules may work in sequence until the minimumresult set is reached. Once the quota has been met, the searchprocessing module 202 may communicate with the ad processing module 210to determine a set of advertisement messages based on the user's profiledata and/or the search request. The ad processing module 210 maybecoupled with a ad database 144 stored in the data store or an ad cache(not shown) stored in the memory 104 to identify general and/orsuitable/targeted, i.e. based on the user's selected interest categoriesand/or one or more search parameters of their search request,advertisement messages previously received from the external ad networks114. Where no suitable previously received advertisement messages arestored, the ad processing module 210 may communicate with one or moreexternal ad networks 134 via the network 138 to obtain suitableadvertisement messages. Obtained advertisement messages may be stored inad database 144/ad cache for subsequent retrieval. The advertisementmessages may comprise advertising content or references/links(meta-information) thereto and may be stored in the ad database 144/adcache in association with selected keywords/interest categories tofacilitate later retrieval. Advertisement messages retrieved from the addatabase 144/ad cache and/or from the ad networks 134 may then beinserted/injected into the result set of content items to be provided tothe user responsive to the user's search query. FIG. 8 shows a detailedblock diagram of the operation of the search process described herein.

The search manager 114 being further operative to determine, based theuser profile, in the case of a an update request or the searchparameters, the case of a search request, e.g. based on at least asubset of the identified keywords, whether there are any previouslyreceived content items stored in the cache 118 in association with thesubset of the identified keywords and, if there are any previouslyreceived content items stored in the cache 118 in association with thesubset of the identified keywords, cause transmission of all, e.g. theentire contents of the associated interest container, or at least asubset, e.g. time, previously-seen, or client-state limited, of thosedetermined previously received content items from the cache 118 to therequestor, i.e. in the second format, e.g. JSON. In one embodiment, ifany content items are found in the cache 118, no further lookups aremade to the database 126. Alternatively, once content items are found inthe cache 118, the search manager also looks in the database 126, eitherbefore or after transmitting the content items from the cache 118 to thedevice 116.

Where there are no previously received content items stored in the cache118 in association with the subset of the identified keywords, or inembodiments where both the cache 118 and database 126 are searched, thesearch manager 114 is further operative to determine, based on at leastthe subset of the identified keywords, whether there are any previouslyreceived content items stored in the database 126 in association withthe subset of the identified keywords and if there are any previouslyreceived content items stored in the database 126 in association withthe subset of the identified keywords, retrieve all, e.g. the entirecontents of the associated container, or at least a subset e.g. time,previously-seen, or client-state limited, of those determined previouslyreceived content items from the database 126, convert the retrievedcontent items from the first format, e.g. structured/fielded format tothe second format, e.g. JSON, store the converted content items in thecache 118 in association with data indicative of at least a subset ofthe subset of the plurality of keywords associated with the retrievedcontent items, i.e. in the same container, and cause transmission of theconverted retrieved content items to the requestor/device 116, i.e., inthe second format, e.g. JSON. Storing the content items in the cache 118expedites processing of that content item for later requests, e.g.assuming that a search request which results in one or more contentitems is indicative of its likelihood of those content items to berequested again.

The results of an update or search request, i.e. the identifiedpreviously received content items, may include user content itemsassociated with people with one or more interests in common as well asconversation and community content items associated with one or morecommon interests. It will be appreciated that other data may also besent back to the client 116 responsive to the receipt of the requestincluding notification messages, direct messages or other systemmessages as well as updates to followed user content items,participating conversations or subscribed communications where theuser's selected interest categories or query do not match but the useris still following, participating or subscribing thereto. Other datasent back to the device 116 may include content items identified astrending within the system, such as based on the frequency and/or volumeof user activities occurring with respect to the content item or theinterest categories associated therewith, or trending external to thesystem 100, such as on the Internet, e.g. current events, etc. Thecontent generator 134 may further include a trending processing module218 (shown in FIG. 2) coupled with external content sources 132 via thenetwork 138, such as news or entertainment news services or web sites,which determines and obtains relevant content and converts that contentto content items, such as by using the scraping module 220. The trendingcontent items, which may be referred to as stories, may then be storedin the cache 118 in a trending store 122 in the second format forprovision to users along with search results.

FIG. 9 depicts exemplary operation of the system 100 when responding toan update request. As shown in FIG. 9, the user/client 116 sends anauthenticated update request, e.g. a request current content matches,generated upon connection of the device 116 to the system or based onselection of a refresh/update operation by the user or initiated by thedevice 116 (001). Upon receipt of the update request, the system 100derives the identity of the user from the request, obtains the user'sprofile from the database 126 (or from the request itself) (002) anddetermines the user's selected interest categories (003). Theinterest/search processing module 202 of the search manager 114 accessesand searches the cache 118 based on the user's selected interestcategories. Any results of the search are returned to the search manager114 in the second format, e.g. JSON (004). If no results are retrievedfrom the cache 118, the search manager queries the database 126 andconverts any results received therefrom from the first format to thesecond format. The system 100 then orders and ranks the received contentbased on ranking principles described above and then transmits thecontent items, or one or subsets/pages thereof, as was described above,to the device 116 (006) which received and displays the content items,or subset thereof, to the user (007).

It will be appreciated that wherein a search request specifies one ormore search parameters, e.g. one or more values of values ranges of oneor more of the parameters listed in FIG. 7, those specified searchparameters define a scope of the search which will be performed and ofthe content items, if any, which will be returned responsive to thatsearch request. It will be appreciated for example, that the morekeyword sets implicated by a search query, the broader the search scopemay be whereas the more keywords specified within each keyword set, thenarrower the search scope may be. In one embodiment, as shown in FIG.10, a search scope is incrementally and/or algorithmically expanded toattempt to increase the number of content items retrieve by a searchrequest until, for example, a specified quota is obtained, a definedmaximum number of attempts are performed, and/or the scope cannot befurther expanded. FIG. 10 shows an exemplary sequence (top to bottom) bywhich a select subset of the parameters of FIG. 7 may be altered, andhow those parameters may be altered, to increase the search scope in anattempt to increase the number of resultant content items. In oneembodiment, data indicative of the altered search scope is provided tothe device 116 along with the search results such that user mayappreciate how the search results were obtained.

For example, in one embodiment, wherein a minimum number of contentitems, e.g. a response quota, to transmit responsive to the request forcontent is defined, and wherein if the number of determined previouslyreceived content items in the cache or database does not exceed theminimum number of content items to transmit as, for example, may bedetermined by the response quota processing module 206 of the searchmanager 114, the scope processing module 208 of the search manager 114may modify the specified content scope so as to increase the number ofdetermined previously received content items in the cache or database,e.g. by removing specific values from the specified search parametersand/or altering, e.g. widening, the specified value ranges. In oneembodiment, the search request may further include a specification orpreference, referred to as a slider or Tic slider, specified by the userto govern how the search scope is broadened. The Tic Slider/preferenceparameter allows the user to influence the scope level of their searchqueries. For example a user could search for conversations with the word‘food’ in the title and by adjusting the Tic Slider towards ‘more’ theywould receive results that are more likely to be tagged with theinterest ‘food’ as well as one of their own interests. If they adjustthe Tic Slider towards ‘less’ they will receive results with less incommon interests. Once the scope has been modified, the search manager114 then attempts the modified search again against the cache118/database 126. This process may be performed iteratively until thenumber of content items retrieved meets or exceeds the specifiedminimum, a maximum number of attempts are performed, and/or the scope ofthe search cannot be expanded any further.

FIG. 11 depicts an example of operation of the system 100 whenresponding to a search request. In particular, as shown in FIG. 11, auser makes a search request which contains search inputs (001). Thesearch manager 114 of the system 100 receives search parameters andinput processing module 228 of the search manager 114 routes the queryto the search processing module 202 (002). The search processing module202 searches the interest containers 222, 224, 226 of the cache 118 forany matching pieces of content (003). The search processing module 202then sends the result set from the cache to the response quotaprocessing module 206 to determine whether the minimum result set hasbeen met. If the minimum size has not been met, then the searchprocessing module 202 does a database search within the database 126 tofind any content items that match the search query (004). The responsequota processing 206 again checks whether the result set meets theminimum requirements. At this point if the result set still does notmeet the minimum requirements, then the scope processing module 208 isused to expand the scope of the search parameters, as was describedabove, and the search process returns to step 003. If multiple passes,as defined by the system 100, e.g. 3, through the scope processingmodule 208 still do not return the minimum required set then theexisting result set is assumed to be best fit (005). The best fit resultset has been found at this point. The ad processing module 210 may thenbe called to provide one or more applicable advertisement messages basedon the user's profile and/or search query. The ad database 144 ischecked first and if no ads are found locally then an ad request is madeto an external add network 134. The returned advertisement messages areinserted/injected into the result set (006). The system 100 formats theany content items that are not in the second format, e.g. JSON, into thesecond format and sends the response, or subset/page thereof, asdescribed above, back to the client 116 (007). The client 116 receivesand displays result set (008).

In one embodiment, as shown in FIG. 13, wherein the received contentitem 1308 further includes data indicative of a geographic locationrelated to the content item, such as the location from which the contentitem originated or other geo-tag, the data indicative of a geographiclocation may be provided back to the device 116 along with theassociated content items so as to enable display of an indication 1302of the indicated geographic location of the content items 1308 by thereceiving device 116 on the user interface 146 geographically relativeto a display of an indication 1302 of the indicated geographic locationof another received content item 1308. In one embodiment, this displaymake take form of a map or globe 1300 presentation which may or may notbe user-manipulatable, e.g. movable so as to show different geographicregions, zoomable, etc. Furthermore, the receiving device's location mayalso be represented on the display in relation to the displayed contentitems 1302 to demonstrate the geo-physical relationship between the userthereof and the content items 1308 transmitted to them. In oneembodiment, graphical representations 1304 of relationships betweenparticular displayed content items 1308 may be implemented such as arcs,lines or other connectors, drawn or depicted between, i.e. connecting,the geographic location indicators 1302, and/or displaying relatedcontent items 1308 or geographic indicators 1302 in a similar particularcolor or other depiction or otherwise similarly highlighting, moving,wiggling, magnifying, etc. the depiction of the related content items.It will be appreciated that geo-physical relationships may further thediscovery of content of interest as users may be interested in anycontent originating from a particular location, such as their ownlocation. It will be appreciated that the search/update requestprocesses described above may further factor in the geographic locationof the requesting user/device 116 as compared to the geographiclocations of the content items when determining which content items totransmit to the device 116. In one embodiment, the client device 116receives the result set from the system 100 and begins sorting thelocations of the received content items into groups based on theirgeo-graphical location. The grouping algorithm has a set of grids thatmap onto a sphere and for every point that falls into a grid, that point1306 is added to a “group point” that appears at the center of thatgrid. The geographic indicators 1302 may comprise visual “TicPoints”1306 which may be created at the center of every grid which had a pointfound within it. The TicPoint 1306 may display the number of points thatwere grouped within that grid, or if only one point was found, thatpoint's image is shown. Alternatively, or in addition thereto, the userinterface 146 of the device 116 may permit the user to zoom in and outof the geographical display 1300 and as the user zooms in and out, atspecific zoom levels, the points on the globe are regrouped to show moreor less singular points. This allows for a large data set to bedisplayed without appearing cluttered on the screen. Further,connections between associated points on the globe may be visualized bydisplay arcs of light between the associated points to depictassociations between these points and their meta data and may bedetermined by common interactions between users including posting intothe same conversations, common and mutual follows, and post locations.

In one embodiment, where a user's user profile specifies a particularlanguage, e.g. their native language, the system 100 may provide allcontent items to that user in that language, translating any contentitems submitted in another language. As opposed to localization whichtranslates static field identifiers, prompt and other user interfaceelements into a desired language, the translation mechanism of thesystem 100 ensures that any user may fully participate and interact withany other user from anywhere in the world with no language barrier therebetween

In particular, wherein the received content item includes contentcharacterized by a first language, either implicitly or explicitly, andfurther wherein the received request is associated with a secondlanguage, which may be provided with the request or stored requestinguser's in the user profile, the search manager 114 may be furtheroperative, prior to the transmission of at least a subset of thosedetermined previously received content items from the cache to therequestor or the transmission of the converted retrieved content itemsto the requestor, to determine whether the first language of contentitems to be transmitted is the same as the second language and if not,translate, via e.g. the translation processing module 204 (shown in FIG.2), the content of each of the content items from the first language tothe second language prior to transmission. In one embodiment, only thetranslated content is transmitted to the user/device 116. Alternativelyboth the original and translated content may be sent to the user/device116 so that the user may appreciate translation. As will be described,and external translation service 130 may be used, such as the MicrosoftTranslator API made available by Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash. Theexternal translation service may receive content to be translated and alanguage code specifying the language to which the content is to betranslated. The external translation service 130 may derive, infer orimply the original language from the content itself or the originatinglanguage may be identified to the service 130 as well. Once translated,the translated content is returned to the system 100. Identifiersincluded in the translated requests and responses may be used tocorrelate a response with a request. The translation service 130 maycharge a fee for each translation request processed thereby.

In one embodiment, the system further includes a translation cache 128coupled with the search manager 114, which may be stored in the datastore 124 or the memory 104, or elsewhere, the search manager 114 beingfurther operative to determine, for each content item to be transmitted,whether a translation of the content thereof in the second language isstored in the translation cache 128 and if so, retrieve the translationand if the translation is not stored in the translation cache, translatethe content from the first language to the second language and storingthe translation in the translation cache. It will be appreciated thattranslations of content of a content item may be formed into contentitems themselves. This storage caching method reduces the need forrepeated calls to the external translation service 130 which decreasesresponse time to the client device 116 as well as processing costsassociated with the external translation service 130.

The following languages, and their respective identifier codes, may besupported by the system 100:

Language Code English Name ar Arabic bs-Latn Bosnian (Latin) bgBulgarian ca Catalan zh-CHS Chinese Simplified zh-CHT ChineseTraditional hr Croatian cs Czech da Danish nl Dutch en English etEstonian fi Finnish fr French de German el Greek ht Haitian Creole heHebrew hi Hindi mww Hmong Daw hu Hungarian id Indonesian it Italian jaJapanese sw Kiswahili tlh Klingon tlh-Qaak Klingon (pIqaD) ko Korean lvLatvian lt Lithuanian ms Malay mt Maltese no Norwegian fa Persian plPolish pt Portuguese otq Queretaro Otomi ro Romanian ru Russian sr-CyrlSerbian (Cyrillic) sr-Latn Serbian (Latin) sk Slovak sl Slovenian esSpanish sv Swedish th Thai tr Turkish uk Ukrainian ur Urdu vi Vietnamesecy Welsh yua Yucatec Maya

It will be appreciated that additional privacy controls or permissionsmay be provided, such as via the user profile, to allow a user tocontrol what of their content items, which other users are able to seeor discover, and what users or content items and other users they wishto see. These privacy controls or permissions may be factored into theupdate/search request processes describe above to further filter orrefine the content items which are provided to the user responsive to arequest.

In one embodiment, a content ranking system, which may be dynamic, isprovided, as shown in FIG. 12, which manages weight variables on allcontent (Users, Communities, Conversations, Trends, Ads) created withinthe system 100. These weights are used to rank content against eachother using certain categories. There are certain user actions (Likes,Replies, Conversation Opens, User Follows, . . . ) that are tracked andused as influences for content weights. When a user performs one ofthese action on a piece of content, the respective contents weightvariable is influenced by the actions influence rate. The weights mythen determine the order for content in dynamically ranked data arrayswhich are categorized by various categories. These ranking arrays areupdated by the system 100 at a fixed or variable rate (hourly,bi-hourly, . . . ) which is determined by localized demand and arestored in the memory 104 for quick access. This ranking system improvesthe effectiveness of the automatic feeds and literal search systemswithin the system 100. As opposed to traditional recommendation engineswhich use literal count statistics, such as the number of likes and/orreplies, to determine rankings, the ranking system of the system 100extends these methodologies by additionally influencing content rankingswith user action weight variables. Every user's analytics profile (i.e.their action weight variables) may be different and this influenceprovides a much more effective result set because the content iscontinuously tailored to the user. People's interests change over timewithout them explicitly saying so and the analytics profile of themmaintained by the system 100 is able to track this. In one embodiment, arank of a content item is determined upon receipt of that content itemby the system and/or is computed/re-computed whenever a content item isstored in the cache 118, e.g. upon receipt or upon retrieval from thecontent database 126.

FIG. 3 depicts a flow chart showing operation of the system 100 of FIGS.1 and 2. In particular FIG. 3 shows a method of distributing a contentitem, provided by a source to a content distribution system 100, to asubset of a plurality of users via a network 138 coupled therewith, thecontent distribution system comprising a processor 102, a memory 104coupled with the processor and a data store 124 coupled with the memory104 and the processor 102, the memory 104 comprising a cache 118 and thedata store 124 comprising a database 126.

The operation of the system 200 includes: receiving, by the processor,the content item from the source, the content item being associated withdata indicative of a subset of a plurality of keywords selected from aplurality of keyword sets, each keyword set comprising a hierarchicalsequence of keywords, wherein for each keyword set a first keyword ofthe sequence of keywords defines a context, different from a contextdefined by a first keyword of a different keyword set, and eachsubsequent keyword of the sequence of the keyword set defines anarrowing of the context over the previous keyword of the sequence ofthe keyword set [Block 302]; storing, by the processor, each of thereceived content item in a first format in the database in associationwith data indicative of at least a subset of the subset of the pluralityof keywords associated with the received content item [Block 304];determining, by the processor, whether to store the received contentitem in the cache and, where it is determined to store the receivedcontent item in the cache, storing, by the processor, each of thereceived content item in a second format, different from the firstformat, in the cache in association with data indicative of at least asubset of the subset of the plurality of keywords associated with thereceived content item [Block 306]; receiving, by the processor, arequest for content from a requestor via the network [Block 308];identifying, by the processor, based on the received request, one ormore keywords selected from the plurality of keyword sets [Block 310];determining, by the processor based on at least a subset of theidentified keywords, whether there are any previously received contentitems stored in the cache in association with the subset of theidentified keywords and, if there are any previously received contentitems stored in the cache in association with the subset of theidentified keywords [Block 302], causing, by the processor, thetransmission of at least a subset of those determined previouslyreceived content items from the cache to the requestor via the network[Block 314]; and where there are no previously received content itemsstored in the cache in association with the subset of the identifiedkeywords, determining, by the processor based on at least the subset ofthe identified keywords, whether there are any previously receivedcontent items stored in the database in association with the subset ofthe identified keywords [Block 316] and if there are any previouslyreceived content items stored in the database in association with thesubset of the identified keywords, retrieving, by the processor, atleast a subset of those determined previously received content itemsfrom the database [Block 318], converting, by the processor, theretrieved content items from the first format to the second format[Block 320], storing, by the processor, the converted content items inthe cache in association with data indicative of at least a subset ofthe subset of the plurality of keywords associated with the retrievedcontent items, and causing, by the processor, transmission of theconverted retrieved content items to the requestor via the network[Block 322].

In one embodiment, the source comprises a device 116 operated by a userof the plurality of users. In one embodiment, the second formatcomprises JavaScript Object Notation (“JSON”).

In one embodiment, wherein the received content item is furthersequentially associated with one or more previously received contentitems, the received content item and the previously received contentitems may be stored in the cache 118 and/or database 126 in associationwith each other such that any determination of whether there are anypreviously received content items stored in the cache 118 and/ordatabase 126 responsive to a request which identifies one of thereceived content or sequentially associated one or more previouslyreceived content items causes all, or at least a subset, of the receivedcontent and sequentially associated one or more previously receivedcontent items to be retrieved. In one embodiment, the set of associatedone or more previously received content items are further divided intoordered, e.g. temporally, subsets, referred to as “pages”. In oneembodiment, each subset may be sized to hold a sufficient number ofcontent items to fill a defined display area of the user interface 146of the device 116, e.g. one “screen full” and/or may include additionalcontent items so as to create seamless/continuous viewing experience, inconcert with transmission of the next subset, for the user whenscrolling through the transmitted subset. Upon retrieval of a givencontent item, the subset or page of content items containing theretrieved content item may be transmitted to the user/device 116 first.As the user, via the user interface 146 of the device 116 interacts withthe transmitted page, e.g. navigates to or views the last or next tolast content item in the transmitted page, the user interface 146 maycause the device 116 to automatically request the next page from thesystem 100. Alternatively, or in addition thereto, the user interface146 may provide a control, e.g. a “more” button, enabling the user tomanually cause the device 116 to request the next, or a particular,subset/page. In this way, e.g. for large conversations, the contentitems thereof are sent in subsets on demand thereby saving bandwidth andprocessing resources of the both the system 100 and device 116.

In one embodiment, the determining of whether to store the receivedcontent item in the cache may further include determining whether thecache 118 has available capacity and storing the received content itemin the cache 118 when the cache 118 has available capacity. In oneembodiment, the determining of whether to store the received contentitem in the cache may further include determining to store the receivedcontent item in the cache 118 if previously received content items,whose associated data is indicative of a subset of the plurality ofkeywords which at least partially overlaps the subset of the pluralityof keywords associated with the received content item, are stored in thecache 118. In one embodiment, the determining of whether to store thereceived content item in the cache may further include computing aranking value of the received content item and store the receivedcontent item in the cache 118 if the computed ranking value exceeds athreshold. In one embodiment, the threshold may be based on the computedranking value of at least a subset of other previously received contentitems stored in the cache 118.

In one embodiment, the content distribution system may further include acategory database 148 operative to store the plurality of keyword setswherein each keyword within each keyword set is identified by a uniqueidentifier, and further wherein the data indicative of a subset of theplurality of keywords comprises the unique identifiers of the respectivekeywords as stored in the category database 148.

In one embodiment, the system 100 may further include a user database222, coupled with the processor 102, which includes a plurality of datarecords, each associated with one user of the plurality of users, eachdata record further comprising data indicative of a subset of theplurality of keywords selected from the plurality of keyword sets,wherein the request for content comprises an update request, theidentifying further comprising identifying the user from which therequest for content was received, retrieving, by the processor, the datarecord from the user database associated with the identified user anddetermining the identified keywords based on the subset of the pluralityof keywords of the retrieved data record.

In one embodiment, the request for content may specify a content scope,the identifying further comprising determining the identified keywordsbased on the content scope. In one embodiment, the operation of thesystem 100 may further include establishing a minimum number of contentitems to transmit responsive to the request for content, and wherein ifthe number of determined previously received content items in the cache118 or database 126 does not exceed the minimum number of content itemsto transmit, modifying, by the processor 102, the specified contentscope so as to increase the number of determined previously receivedcontent items in the cache 118 or database 126.

In one embodiment, the operation of the system 100 further includes:evaluating, by the processor 102, a subset of content items stored inthe cache 118 to compute a ranking value thereof, and wherein thecomputed ranking value does not exceed a threshold value, removing thesubset of content items from the cache 118. In one embodiment, thisranking is computed periodically. Alternatively, or in addition thereto,it may be computed when the content item is stored in the cache 118 andmay be recomputed when the content item, having been previously removedfrom the cache 118, is retrieved from the content database 126 and againstored in the cache 118.

In one embodiment, the received content item may further include dataindicative of a geographic location related to the content item, whereinthe data indicative of a geographic location is operative to enabledisplay of an indication of the indicated geographic location of thecontent item by the receiving requestor geographically relative to adisplay of an indication of the indicated geographic location of anotherreceived content item.

In one embodiment, the received content item includes contentcharacterized by a first language and further wherein the receivedrequest is associated with a second language, the operation of thesystem 100 may further include determining whether the first language ofcontent items to be transmitted is the same as the second language andif not, translating, by the processor 102, the content of each of thecontent items from the first language to the second language prior totransmission. In one embodiment, the system 100 may further include atranslation cache 128 coupled with the processor 102, the operation ofthe system 100 further including determining, for each content item tobe transmitted, whether a translation of the content thereof in thesecond language is stored in the translation cache 128 and if so,retrieving the translation and if the translation is not stored in thetranslation cache 128, translating the content from the first languageto the second language and storing the translation in the translationcache 128.

The system 100 or device 116, or application executing thereon,described above may, may operate or be implemented in accordance withthe embodiments described in Appendix A, included herewith andincorporated by reference herein, including the operation of the userinterface 146 with respect to the geographical display of the locationsof the content items and other functional aspects.

Referring to FIG. 4, an illustrative embodiment of a general computersystem 400 is shown. The computer system 400 can include a set ofinstructions that can be executed to cause the computer system 400 toperform any one or more of the methods or computer based functionsdisclosed herein. The computer system 400 may operate as a standalonedevice or may be connected, e.g., using a network, to other computersystems or peripheral devices. Any of the components or modulesdiscussed above, such as the processors 202 and 302, may be a computersystem 400 or a component in the computer system 400. The computersystem 400 may implement the content distribution system of FIG. 1and/or the client devices 116.

In a networked deployment, the computer system 400 may operate in thecapacity of a server or as a client user computer in a client-serveruser network environment, or as a peer computer system in a peer-to-peer(or distributed) network environment. The computer system 400 can alsobe implemented as or incorporated into various devices, such as apersonal computer (PC), a tablet PC, a set-top box (STB), a personaldigital assistant (PDA), a mobile device, a palmtop computer, a laptopcomputer, a desktop computer, a communications device, a wirelesstelephone, a land-line telephone, a control system, a camera, a scanner,a facsimile machine, a printer, a pager, a personal trusted device, aweb appliance, a network router, switch or bridge, or any other machinecapable of executing a set of instructions (sequential or otherwise)that specify actions to be taken by that machine. In a particularembodiment, the computer system 400 can be implemented using electronicdevices that provide voice, video or data communication. Further, whilea single computer system 400 is illustrated, the term “system” shallalso be taken to include any collection or cluster of systems orsub-systems that individually or jointly execute a set, or multiplesets, of instructions to perform one or more computer functions.

As illustrated in FIG. 4, the computer system 400 may include aprocessor 402, e.g., a central processing unit (CPU), a graphicsprocessing unit (GPU), or both. The processor 402 may be a component ina variety of systems. For example, the processor 402 may be part of astandard personal computer or a workstation. The processor 402 may beone or more general processors, specifically configured processors,digital signal processors, application specific integrated circuits,field programmable gate arrays, servers, networks, digital circuits,analog circuits, combinations thereof, or other now known or laterdeveloped devices for analyzing and processing data. The processor 402may implement a software program, such as code generated manually (i.e.,programmed).

The computer system 400 may include a memory 404 that can communicatevia a bus 408. The memory 404 may be a main memory, a static memory, ora dynamic memory. The memory 404 may include, but is not limited tocomputer readable storage media such as various types of volatile andnon-volatile storage media, including but not limited to random accessmemory, read-only memory, programmable read-only memory, electricallyprogrammable read-only memory, electrically erasable read-only memory,flash memory, magnetic tape or disk, optical media and the like. In oneembodiment, the memory 404 includes a cache or random access memory forthe processor 402. In alternative embodiments, the memory 404 isseparate from the processor 402, such as a cache memory of a processor,the system memory, or other memory. The memory 404 may be an externalstorage device or database for storing data. Examples include a harddrive, solid state drive, compact disc (“CD”), digital video disc(“DVD”), memory card, memory stick, floppy disc, universal serial bus(“USB”) memory device, or any other device operative to store data. Thememory 404 is operable to store instructions executable by the processor402. The functions, acts or tasks illustrated in the figures ordescribed herein may be performed by the programmed processor 402executing the instructions 412 stored in the memory 404. The functions,acts or tasks are independent of the particular type of instructionsset, storage media, processor or processing strategy and may beperformed by software, hardware, integrated circuits, firm-ware,micro-code and the like, operating alone or in combination. Likewise,processing strategies may include multiprocessing, multitasking,parallel processing and the like.

As shown, the computer system 400 may further include a display unit414, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), an organic light emittingdiode (OLED), a flat panel display, a solid state display, a cathode raytube (CRT), a projector, a printer or other now known or later developeddisplay device for outputting determined information. The display 414may act as an interface for the user to see the functioning of theprocessor 402, or specifically as an interface with the software storedin the memory 404 or in the drive unit 406.

Additionally, the computer system 400 may include an input device 416configured to allow a user to interact with any of the components ofsystem 400. The input device 416 may be a number pad, a keyboard, or acursor control device, such as a mouse, or a joystick, touch screendisplay, remote control or any other device operative to interact withthe system 400.

In a particular embodiment, as depicted in FIG. 4, the computer system400 may also include a disk or optical drive unit 406. The disk driveunit 406 may include a computer-readable medium 410 in which one or moresets of instructions 412, e.g. software, can be embedded. Further, theinstructions 412 may embody one or more of the methods or logic asdescribed herein. In a particular embodiment, the instructions 412 mayreside completely, or at least partially, within the memory 404 and/orwithin the processor 402 during execution by the computer system 400.The memory 404 and the processor 402 also may include computer-readablemedia as discussed above.

The present disclosure contemplates a non-transitory computer-readablemedium that includes instructions 412 or receives and executesinstructions 412 responsive to a propagated signal, so that a deviceconnected to a network 420 can communicate voice, video, audio, imagesor any other data over the network 420. Further, the instructions 412may be transmitted or received over the network 420 via a communicationinterface 418. The communication interface 418 may be a part of theprocessor 402 or may be a separate component. The communicationinterface 418 may be created in software or may be a physical connectionin hardware. The communication interface 418 is configured to connectwith a network 420, external media, the display 414, or any othercomponents in system 400, or combinations thereof. The connection withthe network 420 may be a physical connection, such as a wired Ethernetconnection or may be established wirelessly as discussed below.Likewise, the additional connections with other components of the system400 may be physical connections or may be established wirelessly.

The network 420 may include wired networks, wireless networks, orcombinations thereof. The wireless network may be a cellular telephonenetwork, an 802.11, 802.16, 802.20, or WiMax network. Further, thenetwork 420 may be a public network, such as the Internet, a privatenetwork, such as an intranet, or combinations thereof, and may utilize avariety of networking protocols now available or later developedincluding, but not limited to TCP/IP based networking protocols.

Embodiments of the subject matter and the functional operationsdescribed in this specification can be implemented in digital electroniccircuitry, or in computer software, firmware, or hardware, including thestructures disclosed in this specification and their structuralequivalents, or in combinations of one or more of them. Embodiments ofthe subject matter described in this specification can be implemented asone or more computer program products, i.e., one or more modules ofcomputer program instructions encoded on a computer readable medium forexecution by, or to control the operation of, data processing apparatus.While the computer-readable medium is shown to be a single medium, theterm “computer-readable medium” includes a single medium or multiplemedia, such as a centralized or distributed database, and/or associatedcaches and servers that store one or more sets of instructions. The term“computer-readable medium” shall also include any medium that is capableof storing, encoding or carrying a set of instructions for execution bya processor or that cause a computer system to perform any one or moreof the methods or operations disclosed herein. The computer readablemedium can be a machine-readable storage device, a machine-readablestorage substrate, a memory device, or a combination of one or more ofthem. The term “data processing apparatus” encompasses all apparatus,devices, and machines for processing data, including by way of example aprogrammable processor, a computer, or multiple processors or computers.The apparatus can include, in addition to hardware, code that creates anexecution environment for the computer program in question, e.g., codethat constitutes processor firmware, a protocol stack, a databasemanagement system, an operating system, or a combination of one or moreof them.

In a particular non-limiting, exemplary embodiment, thecomputer-readable medium can include a solid-state memory such as amemory card or other package that houses one or more non-volatileread-only memories. Further, the computer-readable medium can be arandom access memory or other volatile re-writable memory. Additionally,the computer-readable medium can include a magneto-optical or opticalmedium, such as a disk or tapes or other storage device to capturecarrier wave signals such as a signal communicated over a transmissionmedium. A digital file attachment to an e-mail or other self-containedinformation archive or set of archives may be considered a distributionmedium that is a tangible storage medium. Accordingly, the disclosure isconsidered to include any one or more of a computer-readable medium or adistribution medium and other equivalents and successor media, in whichdata or instructions may be stored.

In an alternative embodiment, dedicated hardware implementations, suchas application specific integrated circuits, programmable logic arraysand other hardware devices, can be constructed to implement one or moreof the methods described herein. Applications that may include theapparatus and systems of various embodiments can broadly include avariety of electronic and computer systems. One or more embodimentsdescribed herein may implement functions using two or more specificinterconnected hardware modules or devices with related control and datasignals that can be communicated between and through the modules, or asportions of an application-specific integrated circuit. Accordingly, thepresent system encompasses software, firmware, and hardwareimplementations.

In accordance with various embodiments of the present disclosure, themethods described herein may be implemented by software programsexecutable by a computer system. Further, in an exemplary, non-limitedembodiment, implementations can include distributed processing,component/object distributed processing, and parallel processing.Alternatively, virtual computer system processing can be constructed toimplement one or more of the methods or functionality as describedherein.

Although the present specification describes components and functionsthat may be implemented in particular embodiments with reference toparticular standards and protocols, the invention is not limited to suchstandards and protocols. For example, standards for Internet and otherpacket switched network transmission (e.g., TCP/IP, UDP/IP, HTML, HTTP,HTTPS) represent examples of the state of the art. Such standards areperiodically superseded by faster or more efficient equivalents havingessentially the same functions. Accordingly, replacement standards andprotocols having the same or similar functions as those disclosed hereinare considered equivalents thereof.

A computer program (also known as a program, software, softwareapplication, script, or code) can be written in any form of programminglanguage, including compiled or interpreted languages, and it can bedeployed in any form, including as a standalone program or as a module,component, subroutine, or other unit suitable for use in a computingenvironment. A computer program does not necessarily correspond to afile in a file system. A program can be stored in a portion of a filethat holds other programs or data (e.g., one or more scripts stored in amarkup language document), in a single file dedicated to the program inquestion, or in multiple coordinated files (e.g., files that store oneor more modules, sub programs, or portions of code). A computer programcan be deployed to be executed on one computer or on multiple computersthat are located at one site or distributed across multiple sites andinterconnected by a communication network.

The processes and logic flows described in this specification can beperformed by one or more programmable processors executing one or morecomputer programs to perform functions by operating on input data andgenerating output. The processes and logic flows can also be performedby, and apparatus can also be implemented as, special purpose logiccircuitry, e.g., an FPGA (field programmable gate array) or an ASIC(application specific integrated circuit).

Processors suitable for the execution of a computer program include, byway of example, both general and special purpose microprocessors, andanyone or more processors of any kind of digital computer. Generally, aprocessor will receive instructions and data from a read only memory ora random access memory or both. The essential elements of a computer area processor for performing instructions and one or more memory devicesfor storing instructions and data. Generally, a computer will alsoinclude, or be operatively coupled to receive data from or transfer datato, or both, one or more mass storage devices for storing data, e.g.,magnetic, magneto optical disks, or optical disks. However, a computerneed not have such devices. Moreover, a computer can be embedded inanother device, e.g., a mobile telephone, a personal digital assistant(PDA), a mobile audio player, a Global Positioning System (GPS)receiver, to name just a few. Computer readable media suitable forstoring computer program instructions and data include all forms ofnonvolatile memory, media and memory devices, including by way ofexample semiconductor memory devices, e.g., EPROM, EEPROM, and flashmemory devices; magnetic disks, e.g., internal hard disks or removabledisks; magneto optical disks; and CD ROM and DVD-ROM disks. Theprocessor and the memory can be supplemented by, or incorporated in,special purpose logic circuitry.

To provide for interaction with a user, embodiments of the subjectmatter described in this specification can be implemented on a devicehaving a display, e.g., a CRT (cathode ray tube) or LCD (liquid crystaldisplay) monitor, for displaying information to the user and a keyboardand a pointing device, e.g., a mouse or a trackball, by which the usercan provide input to the computer. Other kinds of devices can be used toprovide for interaction with a user as well; for example, feedbackprovided to the user can be any form of sensory feedback, e.g., visualfeedback, auditory feedback, or tactile feedback; and input from theuser can be received in any form, including acoustic, speech, or tactileinput.

Embodiments of the subject matter described in this specification can beimplemented in a computing system that includes a back end component,e.g., as a data server, or that includes a middleware component, e.g.,an application server, or that includes a front end component, e.g., aclient computer having a graphical user interface or a Web browserthrough which a user can interact with an implementation of the subjectmatter described in this specification, or any combination of one ormore such back end, middleware, or front end components. The componentsof the system can be interconnected by any form or medium of digitaldata communication, e.g., a communication network. Examples ofcommunication networks include a local area network (“LAN”) and a widearea network (“WAN”), e.g., the Internet.

The computing system can include clients and servers. A client andserver are generally remote from each other and typically interactthrough a communication network. The relationship of client and serverarises by virtue of computer programs running on the respectivecomputers and having a client-server relationship to each other.

The illustrations of the embodiments described herein are intended toprovide a general understanding of the structure of the variousembodiments. The illustrations are not intended to serve as a completedescription of all of the elements and features of apparatus and systemsthat utilize the structures or methods described herein. Many otherembodiments may be apparent to those of skill in the art upon reviewingthe disclosure. Other embodiments may be utilized and derived from thedisclosure, such that structural and logical substitutions and changesmay be made without departing from the scope of the disclosure.Additionally, the illustrations are merely representational and may notbe drawn to scale. Certain proportions within the illustrations may beexaggerated, while other proportions may be minimized. Accordingly, thedisclosure and the figures are to be regarded as illustrative ratherthan restrictive.

While this specification contains many specifics, these should not beconstrued as limitations on the scope of the invention or of what may beclaimed, but rather as descriptions of features specific to particularembodiments of the invention. Certain features that are described inthis specification in the context of separate embodiments can also beimplemented in combination in a single embodiment. Conversely, variousfeatures that are described in the context of a single embodiment canalso be implemented in multiple embodiments separately or in anysuitable sub-combination. Moreover, although features may be describedabove as acting in certain combinations and even initially claimed assuch, one or more features from a claimed combination can in some casesbe excised from the combination, and the claimed combination may bedirected to a sub-combination or variation of a sub-combination.

Similarly, while operations are depicted in the drawings and describedherein in a particular order, this should not be understood as requiringthat such operations be performed in the particular order shown or insequential order, or that all illustrated operations be performed, toachieve desirable results. In certain circumstances, multitasking andparallel processing may be advantageous. Moreover, the separation ofvarious system components in the embodiments described above should notbe understood as requiring such separation in all embodiments, and itshould be understood that the described program components and systemscan generally be integrated together in a single software product orpackaged into multiple software products.

One or more embodiments of the disclosure may be referred to herein,individually and/or collectively, by the term “invention” merely forconvenience and without intending to voluntarily limit the scope of thisapplication to any particular invention or inventive concept. Moreover,although specific embodiments have been illustrated and describedherein, it should be appreciated that any subsequent arrangementdesigned to achieve the same or similar purpose may be substituted forthe specific embodiments shown. This disclosure is intended to cover anyand all subsequent adaptations or variations of various embodiments.Combinations of the above embodiments, and other embodiments notspecifically described herein, will be apparent to those of skill in theart upon reviewing the description.

The Abstract of the Disclosure is provided to comply with 37 C.F.R.§1.72(b) and is submitted with the understanding that it will not beused to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims. Inaddition, in the foregoing Detailed Description, various features may begrouped together or described in a single embodiment for the purpose ofstreamlining the disclosure. This disclosure is not to be interpreted asreflecting an intention that the claimed embodiments require morefeatures than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, as thefollowing claims reflect, inventive subject matter may be directed toless than all of the features of any of the disclosed embodiments. Thus,the following claims are incorporated into the Detailed Description,with each claim standing on its own as defining separately claimedsubject matter.

It is therefore intended that the foregoing detailed description beregarded as illustrative rather than limiting, and that it be understoodthat it is the following claims, including all equivalents, that areintended to define the spirit and scope of this invention.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of distributing a content item, providedby a source to a content distribution system, to a subset of a pluralityof users via a network coupled therewith, the content distributionsystem comprising a processor, a memory coupled with the processor and adata store coupled with the memory and the processor, the memorycomprising a cache and the data store comprising a database, the methodcomprising: receiving, by the processor, the content item from thesource, the content item being associated with data indicative of asubset of a plurality of keywords selected from a plurality of keywordsets, each keyword set comprising a hierarchical sequence of keywords,wherein for each keyword set a first keyword of the sequence of keywordsdefines a context, different from a context defined by a first keywordof a different keyword set, and each subsequent keyword of the sequenceof the keyword set defines a narrowing of the context over the previouskeyword of the sequence of the keyword set; storing, by the processor,each of the received content item in a first format in the database inassociation with data indicative of at least a subset of the subset ofthe plurality of keywords associated with the received content item;determining, by the processor, whether to store the received contentitem in the cache and, where it is determined to store the receivedcontent item in the cache, storing, by the processor, each of thereceived content item in a second format, different from the firstformat, in the cache in association with data indicative of at least asubset of the subset of the plurality of keywords associated with thereceived content item; receiving, by the processor, a request forcontent from a requestor via the network; identifying, by the processor,based on the received request, one or more keywords selected from theplurality of keyword sets; determining, by the processor based on atleast a subset of the identified keywords, whether there are anypreviously received content items stored in the cache in associationwith the subset of the identified keywords and, if there are anypreviously received content items stored in the cache in associationwith the subset of the identified keywords, causing, by the processor,the transmission of at least a subset of those determined previouslyreceived content items from the cache to the requestor via the network;and where there are no previously received content items stored in thecache in association with the subset of the identified keywords,determining, by the processor based on at least the subset of theidentified keywords, whether there are any previously received contentitems stored in the database in association with the subset of theidentified keywords and if there are any previously received contentitems stored in the database in association with the subset of theidentified keywords, retrieving, by the processor, at least a subset ofthose determined previously received content items from the database,converting, by the processor, the retrieved content items from the firstformat to the second format, storing, by the processor, the convertedcontent items in the cache in association with data indicative of atleast a subset of the subset of the plurality of keywords associatedwith the retrieved content items, and causing, by the processor,transmission of the converted retrieved content items to the requestorvia the network.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the source comprisesa device operated by a user of the plurality of users.
 3. The method ofclaim 1 wherein the second format comprises JavaScript Object Notation(“JSON”).
 4. The method of claim 1 wherein the received content item isfurther sequentially associated with one or more previously receivedcontent items, the received content item and the previously receivedcontent items being stored in the cache and/or database in associationwith each other such that any determination of whether there are anypreviously received content items stored in the cache and/or databaseresponsive to a request which identifies one of the received content orsequentially associated one or more previously received content itemscauses at least a subset of the received content and sequentiallyassociated one or more previously received content items to beretrieved.
 5. The method of claim 1 wherein the determining of whetherto store the received content item in the cache further comprisesdetermining whether the cache has available capacity and storing thereceived content item in the cache when the cache has availablecapacity.
 6. The method of claim 1 wherein the determining of whether tostore the received content item in the cache further comprisesdetermining to store the received content item in the cache ifpreviously received content items, whose associated data is indicativeof a subset of the plurality of keywords which at least partiallyoverlaps the subset of the plurality of keywords associated with thereceived content item, are stored in the cache.
 7. The method of claim 1wherein the determining of whether to store the received content item inthe cache further comprises computing a ranking value of the receivedcontent item and store the received content item in the cache if thecomputed ranking value exceeds a threshold.
 8. The method of claim 7wherein the threshold is based on the computed ranking value of at leasta subset of other previously received content items stored in the cache.9. The method of claim 1 wherein the content distribution system furthercomprises a category database operative to store the plurality ofkeyword sets wherein each keyword within each keyword set is identifiedby a unique identifier, and further wherein the data indicative of asubset of the plurality of keywords comprises the unique identifiers ofthe respective keywords as stored in the category database.
 10. Themethod of claim 1 further comprising a user database, coupled with theprocessor, which includes a plurality of data records, each associatedwith one user of the plurality of users, each data record furthercomprising data indicative of a subset of the plurality of keywordsselected from the plurality of keyword sets, wherein the request forcontent comprises an update request, the identifying further comprisingidentifying the user from which the request for content was received,retrieving, by the processor, the data record from the user databaseassociated with the identified user and determining the identifiedkeywords based on the subset of the plurality of keywords of theretrieved data record.
 11. The method of claim 1 wherein the request forcontent specifies a content scope, the identifying further comprisingdetermining the identified keywords based on the content scope.
 12. Themethod of claim 11 further comprising establishing a minimum number ofcontent items to transmit responsive to the request for content, andwherein if the number of determined previously received content items inthe cache or database does not exceed the minimum number of contentitems to transmit, modifying, by the processor, the specified contentscope so as to increase the number of determined previously receivedcontent items in the cache or database.
 13. The method of claim 1further comprising: evaluating, by the processor, a subset of contentitems stored in the cache to compute a ranking value thereof; andwherein the computed ranking value does not exceed a threshold value,removing the subset of content items from the cache.
 14. The method ofclaim 1 wherein the received content item further includes dataindicative of a geographic location related to the content item, whereinthe data indicative of a geographic location is operative to enabledisplay of an indication of the indicated geographic location of thecontent item by the receiving requestor geographically relative to adisplay of an indication of the indicated geographic location of anotherreceived content item.
 15. The method of claim 1 wherein the receivedcontent item includes content characterized by a first language andfurther wherein the received request is associated with a secondlanguage, the causing of transmission of at least a subset of thosedetermined previously received content items from the cache to therequestor and the causing of transmission of the converted retrievedcontent items to the requestor further comprising determining whetherthe first language of content items to be transmitted is the same as thesecond language and if not, translating, by the processor, the contentof each of the content items from the first language to the secondlanguage prior to transmission.
 16. The method of claim 1 wherein thesystem further includes a translation cache coupled with the processor,the translating further including determining, for each content item tobe transmitted, whether a translation of the content thereof in thesecond language is stored in the translation cache and if so, retrievingthe translation and if the translation is not stored in the translationcache, translating the content from the first language to the secondlanguage and storing the translation in the translation cache.
 17. Asystem for distribution of a content item, provided by a source to acontent distribution system, to a subset of a plurality of users, thecontent distribution system comprising a processor, a memory coupledwith the processor and a data store coupled with the memory and theprocessor, the memory comprising a cache and the data store comprising adatabase, the system comprising: first logic stored in the memory andexecutable by the processor to cause the processor to receive thecontent item from the source, the content item being associated withdata indicative of a subset of a plurality of keywords selected from aplurality of keyword sets, each keyword set comprising a hierarchicalsequence of keywords, wherein for each keyword set a first keyword ofthe sequence of keywords defines a context, different from a contextdefined by a first keyword of a different keyword set, and eachsubsequent keyword of the sequence of the keyword set defines anarrowing of the context over the previous keyword of the sequence ofthe keyword set; second logic stored in the memory and executable by theprocessor to cause the processor to store each of the received contentitem in a first format in the database in association with dataindicative of at least a subset of the subset of the plurality ofkeywords associated with the received content item; third logic storedin the memory and executable by the processor to cause the processor todetermine whether to store the received content item in the cache and,where it is determined to store the received content item in the cache,store each of the received content item in a second format, differentfrom the first format, in the cache in association with data indicativeof at least a subset of the subset of the plurality of keywordsassociated with the received content item; fourth logic stored in thememory and executable by the processor to cause the processor to receivea request for content from a requestor via a network coupled therewith;fifth logic stored in the memory and executable by the processor tocause the processor to identify, based on the received request, one ormore keywords selected from the plurality of keyword sets; wherein thefifth logic is further executable by the processor to cause theprocessor to determine, based on at least a subset of the identifiedkeywords, whether there are any previously received content items storedin the cache in association with the subset of the identified keywordsand, if there are any previously received content items stored in thecache in association with the subset of the identified keywords, causetransmission of at least a subset of those determined previouslyreceived content items from the cache to the requestor; where there areno previously received content items stored in the cache in associationwith the subset of the identified keywords, the fifth logic beingfurther executable by the processor to cause the processor to determine,based on at least the subset of the identified keywords, whether thereare any previously received content items stored in the database inassociation with the subset of the identified keywords and if there areany previously received content items stored in the database inassociation with the subset of the identified keywords, retrieve atleast a subset of those determined previously received content itemsfrom the database, convert the retrieved content items from the firstformat to the second format, store the converted content items in thecache in association with data indicative of at least a subset of thesubset of the plurality of keywords associated with the retrievedcontent items, and cause transmission of the converted retrieved contentitems to the requestor.
 18. A system for distribution of a content itemby a source to a content distribution system, to a subset of a pluralityof users, the content distribution system comprising a memory and a datastore, the memory comprising a cache and the data store comprising adatabase, the system comprising: a content receiver coupled with thenetwork and operative to receive the content item from the source, thecontent item being associated with data indicative of a subset of aplurality of keywords selected from a plurality of keyword sets, eachkeyword set comprising a hierarchical sequence of keywords, wherein foreach keyword set a first keyword of the sequence of keywords defines acontext, different from a context defined by a first keyword of adifferent keyword set, and each subsequent keyword of the sequence ofthe keyword set defines a narrowing of the context over the previouskeyword of the sequence of the keyword set; a database manager coupledwith database and the content receiver and operative to store each ofthe received content item in a first format in the database inassociation with data indicative of at least a subset of the subset ofthe plurality of keywords associated with the received content item; acache manager coupled with the cache and the content receiver andoperative to determine whether to store the received content item in thecache and, where it is determined to store the received content item inthe cache, store each of the received content item in a second format,different from the first format, in the cache in association with dataindicative of at least a subset of the subset of the plurality ofkeywords associated with the received content item; a request receivercoupled with the network operative to receive a request for content froma requestor via a network coupled therewith; a search manager coupledwith the request receiver, database manager and cache manager andoperative to identify, based on the received request, one or morekeywords selected from the plurality of keyword sets; the search managerbeing further operative to determine, based on at least a subset of theidentified keywords, whether there are any previously received contentitems stored in the cache in association with the subset of theidentified keywords and, if there are any previously received contentitems stored in the cache in association with the subset of theidentified keywords, cause transmission of at least a subset of thosedetermined previously received content items from the cache to therequestor; where there are no previously received content items storedin the cache in association with the subset of the identified keywords,the search manager being further operative to determine, based on atleast the subset of the identified keywords, whether there are anypreviously received content items stored in the database in associationwith the subset of the identified keywords and if there are anypreviously received content items stored in the database in associationwith the subset of the identified keywords, retrieve at least a subsetof those determined previously received content items from the database,convert the retrieved content items from the first format to the secondformat, store the converted content items in the cache in associationwith data indicative of at least a subset of the subset of the pluralityof keywords associated with the retrieved content items, and causetransmission of the converted retrieved content items to the requestor.19. The system of claim 18, wherein the source comprises a deviceoperated by a user of the plurality of users.
 20. The system of claim 18wherein the second format comprises JavaScript Object Notation (“JSON”).21. The system of claim 18 wherein the received content item is furthersequentially associated with one or more previously received contentitems, the received content item and the previously received contentitems being stored in the cache and/or database in association with eachother such that any determination of whether there are any previouslyreceived content items stored in the cache and/or database responsive toa request which identifies one of the received content or sequentiallyassociated one or more previously received content items causes at leasta subset of the received content and sequentially associated one or morepreviously received content items to be retrieved.
 22. The system ofclaim 18 wherein the cache manager is further operative to determinewhether the cache has available capacity and store the received contentitem in the cache when the cache has available capacity.
 23. The systemof claim 18 wherein the cache manager is further operative to determineto store the received content item in the cache if previously receivedcontent items, whose associated data is indicative of a subset of theplurality of keywords which at least partially overlaps the subset ofthe plurality of keywords associated with the received content item, arestored in the cache.
 24. The system of claim 18 wherein the cachemanager is further operative to compute a ranking value of the receivedcontent item and store the received content item in the cache if thecomputed ranking value exceeds a threshold.
 25. The system of claim 24wherein the threshold is based on the computed ranking value of at leasta subset of other previously received content items stored in the cache.26. The system of claim 18 wherein the content distribution systemfurther comprises a category database operative to store the pluralityof keyword sets wherein each keyword within each keyword set isidentified by a unique identifier, and further wherein the dataindicative of a subset of the plurality of keywords comprises the uniqueidentifiers of the respective keywords as stored in the categorydatabase.
 27. The system of claim 18 further comprising a user database,coupled with the processor, which includes a plurality of data records,each associated with one user of the plurality of users, each datarecord further comprising data indicative of a subset of the pluralityof keywords selected from the plurality of keyword sets, wherein therequest for content comprises an update request, the search managerbeing further operative to identify the user from which the request forcontent was received, retrieve the data record from the user databaseassociated with the identified user and determine the identifiedkeywords based on the subset of the plurality of keywords of theretrieved data record.
 28. The system of claim 18 wherein the requestfor content specifies a content scope, the search manager being furtheroperative to determine the identified keywords based on the contentscope.
 29. The system of claim 28 wherein a minimum number of contentitems to transmit responsive to the request for content is defined, andwherein if the number of determined previously received content items inthe cache or database does not exceed the minimum number of contentitems to transmit, the search manager is further operative to modify thespecified content scope so as to increase the number of determinedpreviously received content items in the cache or database.
 30. Thesystem of claim 18 wherein the cache manager is further operative toevaluate, a subset of content items stored in the cache to compute aranking value thereof and, wherein the computed ranking value does notexceed a threshold value, remove the subset of content items from thecache.
 31. The system of claim 18 wherein the received content itemfurther includes data indicative of a geographic location related to thecontent item, wherein the data indicative of a geographic location isoperative to enable display of an indication of the indicated geographiclocation of the content item by the receiving requestor geographicallyrelative to a display of an indication of the indicated geographiclocation of another received content item.
 32. The system of claim 18wherein the received content item includes content characterized by afirst language and further wherein the received request is associatedwith a second language, the search manager being further operative,prior to the transmission of at least a subset of those determinedpreviously received content items from the cache to the requestor or thetransmission of the converted retrieved content items to the requestor,to determine whether the first language of content items to betransmitted is the same as the second language and if not, translate thecontent of each of the content items from the first language to thesecond language prior to transmission.
 33. The system of claim 32wherein the system further includes a translation cache coupled with thesearch manager, the search manager being further operative to determine,for each content item to be transmitted, whether a translation of thecontent thereof in the second language is stored in the translationcache and if so, retrieve the translation and if the translation is notstored in the translation cache, translate the content from the firstlanguage to the second language and storing the translation in thetranslation cache.
 34. A system for distribution of a content item,provided by a source to a content distribution system, to a subset of aplurality of users via a network coupled therewith, the contentdistribution system comprising a processor, a memory coupled with theprocessor and a data store coupled with the memory and the processor,the memory comprising a cache and the data store comprising a database,the system comprising: means for receiving the content item from thesource, the content item being associated with data indicative of asubset of a plurality of keywords selected from a plurality of keywordsets, each keyword set comprising a hierarchical sequence of keywords,wherein for each keyword set a first keyword of the sequence of keywordsdefines a context, different from a context defined by a first keywordof a different keyword set, and each subsequent keyword of the sequenceof the keyword set defines a narrowing of the context over the previouskeyword of the sequence of the keyword set; means for storing each ofthe received content item in a first format in the database inassociation with data indicative of at least a subset of the subset ofthe plurality of keywords associated with the received content item;means for determining whether to store the received content item in thecache and, where it is determined to store the received content item inthe cache, storing, by the processor, each of the received content itemin a second format, different from the first format, in the cache inassociation with data indicative of at least a subset of the subset ofthe plurality of keywords associated with the received content item;means for receiving a request for content from a requestor via thenetwork; means for identifying, based on the received request, one ormore keywords selected from the plurality of keyword sets; means fordetermining, based on at least a subset of the identified keywords,whether there are any previously received content items stored in thecache in association with the subset of the identified keywords and, ifthere are any previously received content items stored in the cache inassociation with the subset of the identified keywords, causing thetransmission of at least a subset of those determined previouslyreceived content items from the cache to the requestor via the network;where there are no previously received content items stored in the cachein association with the subset of the identified keywords, the means fordetermining further including means for determining, based on at leastthe subset of the identified keywords, whether there are any previouslyreceived content items stored in the database in association with thesubset of the identified keywords and if there are any previouslyreceived content items stored in the database in association with thesubset of the identified keywords, retrieving at least a subset of thosedetermined previously received content items from the database,converting the retrieved content items from the first format to thesecond format, storing the converted content items in the cache inassociation with data indicative of at least a subset of the subset ofthe plurality of keywords associated with the retrieved content items,and causing transmission of the converted retrieved content items to therequestor via the network.